University of Virginia Library

Dates for Some Serially Published Shakespeares
by
Richard Knowles [*]

The lavishly illustrated mid-nineteenth-century Bibles, histories of England, and editions of Shakespeare and other literary classics that helped build the fortunes of publishers like Harper's and Cassell's lent themselves well to serial publication in parts because of the time and expense needed for preparing hundreds, sometimes even more than a thousand, of their exquisitely detailed end-grain wood or steel engravings. Regular publication of serial parts in paper wrappers ensured both adequate preparation time and a steady supply of capital. Several editions of Shakespeare produced in this way proved to be important ones, influential not only because their attractiveness made them very popular but also because their editors, generally not professional scholars as authoritative as Dyce, Halliwell, or Wright, were nonetheless acute and dedicated amateur Shakespeareans as well as gifted authors in their own right. Any New Variorum edition of a Shakespeare play is sure to contain dozens of original, useful comments by such editors as Charles Knight, Howard Staunton, and Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke.

These editions pose a problem for historical scholars in that they are difficult to date accurately. After being issued in parts they were usually bound into volumes, both by the publishers for sale as bound sets and privately by owners of the individual parts, and in either case with title pages provided by the publishers from time to time in the paper-bound numbers. Even if the original paper wrappers were dated, they were discarded in binding, and the title pages and copyright pages of the bound volumes bear dates (if these appear at all) later than the dates of original issue of most of the parts. Library catalogues are more likely than not to give the later dates of the bound volumes, so that one is puzzled to find Alexander Dyce in his Strictures (1859) quoting from Staunton's volume of Shakespeare's Tragedies, whose date appears on title page and in catalogues as 1860. Even if a catalogue card does give inclusive dates for an earlier serial publication, these are of no help in finding date of issue of individual parts, which may have been published in a different order than that found in the bound volumes. The result is that it is sometimes impossible to know whom to credit as the first author of a comment or criticism, or to say who influenced whom. This essay attempts from various kinds of evidence to reconstruct the order and timetable of printing of five of the most important serially issued Shakespeares, four of them popular illustrated editions and one of them sold privately by limited subscription.

1. Charles Knight, ed. The Pictorial Edition of the Works of Shakspere. 8 vols. [1839-43]. Serially issued in 55 parts, 1838-43.

With its hundreds of engravings by W. Harvey, G. F. Sargent, and others this edition surpassed in the extent of its illustration such earlier editions as Boydell's and Valpy's, and was much imitated in succeeding years; moreover, it is textually better than any previous edition. Because of the (often extreme) adherence to the First Folio of 1623 on the part of its editor, the prolific author and publisher Charles Knight (1791-1873), this edition's text restores many correct Folio readings and gets rid of much 18th-century punctuation. The commentary is extensive and intelligent. Many library catalogues, including those of the British Library and the Birmingham Shakespeare Library, make no note of serial publication. The initial catalogue date for the bound sets derives from the "Preface," dated 18 May 1839, to Vol. I of the Histories, the first volume to be published; the closing date comes from the eighth volume to be published, William Shakspere: A Biography, which has a letter-press title page dated 1842 and an engraved one dated 1843. Since, as can be seen from the timetable below, Knight was concurrently publishing separate parts of histories, comedies, and tragedies, the intervening bound volumes appear in apparently random order: Vol. I of the Comedies (1839), Vol. I of the Tragedies (1840), Vol. II of the Histories (1840), Vol. II of the Comedies (1841), Vol. II of the Tragedies (1841; in vols. that include the Poems, 1842), and Doubtful Plays (1843).

Several years ago in a dittoed note distributed to editors of the New Variorum Shakespeare and on file at the Folger Library, T. W. Baldwin attempted to reconstruct the sequence and dates of publication for the separate

parts, using dates of accession jotted in a British Library bound set. On the whole his dating is correct, but there are some errors, and an unbound set of the separately issued parts in their original wrappers, owned by the Folger Library, makes an exact dating a very simple matter. Although there is some inconsistency from one part to another, the title and date for each part (i.e., for each play, since each part contained a whole play) appear printed on the front or back cover and/or announced inside the front cover of the previously published part. Not all these dates specify the first of the month as the date of issue, but Knight himself, in his "Postscript to the Sixth Volume" (Tragedies II), dated 21 December 1841, wrote, "It is now somewhat more than three years since I commenced the publication of 'The Pictorial Edition of Shakspere,' in Monthly Parts; and during that period I have produced a Part on the first day of each month, with one single exception." A "Prospectus" on the back cover of Part 1 predicts 44 parts in 6 volumes (2 vols. of Comedies, 1 of Histories, 2 of Tragedies, and 1 of Poems and Life); by 1 Apr. 1839 (1H4) the prediction had changed to 2 vols. of Histories, 7 vols. in all, and a later decision to publish Doubtful Plays (Tit., Per., TNK, and others) resulted in 8 vols. The "Prospectus" also gives a kind of explanation of the sequence of publication: in order to "exhibit the growth of the Poet's mind," "the Comedies and Tragedies will be published, as nearly as can be ascertained, in the order in which they were written, but in separate classes; and the Histories according to the order of events. Whilst this arrangement is preserved with reference to the completion of the work in volumes, a necessary variety will be offered in the periodical publication of Plays taken from each of the three classes." That sequence is as follows:

• 1838: Pt. 1, Nov., TGV; 2, Dec., Jn.
• 1839: Pt. 3, Jan., Rom.; 4, Feb., LLL; 5, Mar., R2; 6, Apr., 1H4; 7, May, 2H4; 8, June, H5; 9, July, Wiv.; 10, Aug., Ham.; 11, Sept., Err.; 12, Oct., Shr.; 13, Nov., MND; 14, Dec., MV
• 1840: Pt. 15, Jan., Cym.; 16, Feb., Oth.; 17, Mar., Tim.; 18, Apr., Lr.; 19, May, AWW; 20, June, 1H6; 21, July, 2H6; 22, Aug., 3H6; 23, Sept., R3; 24, Oct., H8; 25, Oct., Intro. to Vol. II of Histories (an Essay on 1-3H6 and R3); 26, Nov., Ado; 27, Dec., TN
• 1841: Pt. 28, Jan., AYL, P.S. to TN; 29, Feb., MM; 30, Mar., WT; 31, Apr., Mac.; 32, May, Tmp.; 33, June, Tro.; 34, July, Cor.; 35, Aug., JC; 36, Sept., Ant.; 37, Oct., Poems I (Ven., Luc.); [hiatus, Nov.]; 38, Dec., Poems II (Son.)
• 1842: Pt. 39, Jan., Poems III (LC, PP; Suppl. Notice to Roman Plays); 40, Feb., Tit.; 41, Mar., Per.; 42, Apr., TNK; 43, May, and 44, June, Essay on Plays Ascribed to Sh.; 45-49, July-Nov., Biography; 50, Dec., History of Opinion
• 1843: Pt. 51, Jan., Sh. in Germany, Index; 52, Mar., Biography; 53, May, Biog.; 54-55, July-Aug., Biog.

Incidentally, the Folger holdings reveal that this edition exists in two states. In the first state, that found in the parts in paper wrappers and in some bound sets, the footnotes to the plays are keyed to asterisks, daggers, double daggers, and the like; in the later state found in other bound sets, the notes are identified by a, b, c, etc.

2. Gulian C. Verplanck, ed. The Illustrated Shakespeare. 3 vols. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1847. Serially issued in 138 (?) parts, 1844-47.

This handsome crown-quarto edition illustrated with some fourteen hundred engravings had a complicated publishing history, including a change of publishers and two printing-house fires. It was originally undertaken by the little-known New York engraver H. W. Hewet, apparently the publisher of Hewet's Excelsior New York Illustrated Times (1846) and Hewet's Illuminated Household Stories for Little Folks (n. d.). As Verplanck frankly admits in his "Preface" of 1847 (1:v), the edition was conceived in open imitation of two recent English illustrated Shakespeares, from which most if not all of its engravings are copied: Knight's edition (above), and that of "Barry Corn-wall" [pseud. Bryan Waller Procter], issued serially 1839-43 and in three bound volumes (London: R. Tyas, 1844), whose original illustrations by Kenny Meadows make up the bulk of those imitated by Hewet. To do the editorial work Hewet invited the New York lawyer, congressman, essayist, educator, and amateur Shakespearean scholar Gulian C. Verplanck (1786-1870). Verplanck based his text on John Payne Collier's recent edition of 1842-44, frequently (following Knight) restoring First Folio readings and occasionally adopting original conjectures. His commentary is largely a selection from the 1821 Variorum and the editions of Collier, Knight, and Samuel Weller Singer, amplified with many shrewd and sensible comments of his own, and he supplied an ample introduction to each play emphasizing especially Shakespeare's development as an artist. While this is a derivative edition and not of the first importance, it is yet a very good edition, and its generous, well-informed, and often original commentary and its handsome illustrations might have made it a more popular and influential one but for an accident, noted by Charles P. Daly in his memorial address before the Century Club, April 9, 1870 (Gulian C. Verplanck, 1870, p. 59): "It is much to be regretted that the plates of this excellent edition were shortly afterward destroyed by fire. Being a very costly work, it was not reproduced, and it consequently never became as extensively known as it deserved to be."

In all Hewet published 38 weekly parts in 1844, each consisting of 16 pages, printed on two sheets folded into two quarto gatherings and bound together in paper covers. Unlike the parts in the Knight edition, each of these contained only a portion of a play, or in many cases the ending of one play and the beginning of the next. Hewet completed ten plays and part of an eleventh, then transferred publication of the edition to Harper's while continuing to do the engraving up to the end of the series. The Folger Library owns a complete set of Hewet's 38 parts; although undated they are numbered, and from occasional announcements on the back covers it is possible to reconstruct the publication timetable fairly accurately. Journal notices of the new edition (see below) began to appear in the spring of 1844. A notice on the covers of Nos. 5, 6, and 7 affirms the publisher's utmost efforts to get copies to "his most remote Agents" "on Friday each week," evidently for regular publication on Saturday. A notice in No. 4 announces that, the initial printing of 10,000 copies having been "disposed of" in response to popular demand, Hewet will have to "remove and increase his establishment" and so defer publication of No. 5 "until the 27th inst." The earliest month in 1844

when a fifth part could have been published on a Saturday the 27th is April. No. 37 advertises, clearly for the Christmas season, "A Splendid Holiday Present for Children. To Be Published on Wednesday, 11th inst. The Life of Christ!" In December 1844 the 11th of the month fell on Wednesday, so that No. 37 would presumably have been published on the previous Saturday, 7 December. If No. 5 had been published on 27 April and successive parts had appeared regularly each week, No. 37 would have been published on 7 December; the dates of Saturday, 27 April, and Wednesday, 11 December, thus confirm each other and establish a regular weekly publication schedule for most of 1844. Assuming that Hewet's move in April from 236 Broadway to 11 Spruce Street did not take more than a week or so, we may conclude that No. 1 was published in mid-March, probably on the 23rd or the Saturday before. No. 38, Hewet's last, must have appeared in December since it bears the same Christmas advertisement as No. 37. Thus the part of Verplanck's edition published by Hewet may be dated as follows:

• 1844: Pts. 1-5, Mar.-Apr., Ham.; 5-8, Apr.-May, Mac.; 9-12, May-June, Oth.; 13-16, June-July, Wiv.; 16-20, July-Aug., Rom.; 20-24, Aug.-Sept., Lr.; 24-28, Sept.-Oct., Cym.; 29-31, Oct., MV; 32-34, Nov., Err.; 34-37, Nov.-Dec., Shr.; 37-38, Dec., TGV (incomplete)

Two journal notices support this timetable: the May issue of The Columbian Magazine, whose copy would have been written in April, announces (1:238) that three "weekly Issues" of "Hewet's Shakspeare" have so far appeared, comprising most of the text of Hamlet, and the July issue of The Knickerbocker (24:102) notes that (as of June, when copy was written) twelve numbers have appeared.

Early in 1845 the publication was taken over by Harper's. The United States Magazine and Democratic Review announces in its March issue (16: 310), "Harpers have resumed the publication of the 'Illustrated Shakspeare,' edited by Verplanck," and the New York weekly The Anglo American for 1 March (4:451) notes receipt of review copies of "Double No. xxxix and xl. . . . This work has passed from the hands of the publishers who commenced, and will be completed by the Harpers. . . . The numbers before us consist of the concluding portion of 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona' and the commencement of 'The Winter's Tale'." I have not been able to find a complete set of the unbound parts of the plays published by Harper's: the Folger Library owns a few early parts without covers; the New York Public Library owns a single part of 2H4 misbound in a cover for Rom.; the Boston Public Library owns parts for most of the plays, unfortunately cut apart and rebound, sometimes in original wrappers, to form whole plays; and the Library of Congress owns Nos. 63-82 and 93-130 of the issues originally submitted by Harper's for copyright, about half of them misbound in the wrong covers and all of them bearing the clerk of the court's notations of dates when batches of these parts were deposited. In the Copyright Record Books of the District Courts, 1790-1870, now held at the Library of Congress, that for the New York Southern District court, Sept. 1844 to July 1845, records on 6 June

1845 (147:485) a claim of copyright for "Harper's Illuminated and Illustrated Shakespeare," and at the bottom of the page the clerk has noted from time to time when the parts were actually deposited, as follows: Parts 1-54, 6 June 1845; 55-60, 19 July; 61-70, 18 Oct.; 71-74, 10 Feb. 1846; 75-76, 14 Apr.; 77-90, 3 July; 91-108, 3 Sept.; and 109-134, 11 Mar. 1847. Since on most of these dates (or on the previous day) Harper's entered other copyright claims at the court, and since the dates always agree with those written on the actual parts deposited for copyright, these jottings are accurate. On 17 Feb. 1847 (150:1556) the clerk records Harper's application for ownership of "the title of a Book," to wit Verplanck's edition issued in three volumes under the new title Shakespeare's Plays; as will appear below, the edition was not yet complete, and there is no record that the volumes were ever deposited. The book notices in The Anglo American, the New York journal which appeared every Saturday, record publication of many parts of the edition. Since in several cases these notices occur a week or more after a part was deposited for copyright, I infer that Harper's regularly issued its parts near the end of the week, too late for them to be noticed in Saturday's review column, and so I regularly assume publication about a week before these journal notices. From the evidence listed above and from the numbering of quires in both serial parts and the 1847 edition, I have been able to reconstruct a schedule of publication of the parts of Verplanck's Shakespeare issued by Harper's.

On the back of the Romeo and Juliet wrapper in the New York Public Library is printed this notice: "The thirty-eight numbers already issued by H. W. Hewet are sold at twelve-and-a-half cents each: those hereafter to be published will contain at least double the quantity of matter, and will be sold at twenty-five cents each. They will be issued at intervals of about two weeks by the subscribers, from whom back numbers may be procured. New York, February 15, 1845. HARPER & BROTHERS." Evidently Harper's was reissuing Hewet's back stock in its own newly printed wrappers; perhaps some of the former numbers had been or were being reprinted by Harper's, since for some early numbers Hewet had run through his original printing of 10,000. Harper's must have commenced publication of new numbers within a week or ten days of the notice of 15 February, since by 1 March The Anglo American (see above) had received Harper's first double Number, 39-40.

Harper's immediately abandoned Hewet's practice of randomly publishing comedies and tragedies, and instead from February into early October concentrated on finishing the comedies, presumably to allow owners of the parts to have them bound into a single volume of Comedies. The schedule as I have worked it out is as follows:

• 1845: Pt. 39, Feb., TGV (completed); 40-43, Feb.-Mar., WT; 43-46, Mar.-Apr., Ado; 46-49, Apr.-May, LLL; 49-52, May, TN; 52-[56], May-June, AYL; [56]-[59], June-July, MND; [59]-62, July-Aug., MM; 62-65, Aug.-Sept., Tmp.; 65-69, Sept.-Oct., AWW

Production slowed somewhat during the summer, when the double parts appeared at longer than bi-weekly intervals on the average. Up through No. 50 Harper's continued Hewet's format of two sheets (two eight-page quires) per numbered part, so that Harper's semi-monthly double parts included 32 pages of text. Halfway through Twelfth Night, from No. 51 onward, the format changes to 36 pages per double part, three twelve-page quires of quarto-in-six. These quires are signed (or numbered) consecutively throughout the rest of the edition, beginning with quires 68, 69, and 70 in No. 51-52. Apparently the numbering begins at 68 because the 800 pages of the edition already printed can be considered approximately the equivalent of 67 of the new twelve-page quires; probably Harper's was anticipating the possibility of a later reprint of the edition entirely in twelve-page gatherings. In all bound volumes of the Comedies that I have seen the quires are a mixture of those of eight pages (for plays issued before TN) and those of twelve pages (for plays issued afterwards).

The new format of 36 pages per double part was apparently intended to be the norm from now on, since it is approximately the same number of pages as in the 32-page format of Harper's previous issues and fulfills Harper's promise of three months before to provide "at least double the quantity of matter" in Hewet's single parts. Nonetheless, the parts extant in the Library of Congress reveal that about every third issue was a smaller one consisting of only two quires and 24 pages. I am assuming that the first issue in the new format, No. 51-52, immediately set the norm and consisted of three quires and 36 pages; however, irregularities begin almost immediately, and the uncertainty that results for parts whose exemplars I have been unable to see is reflected in the bracketed numbers in the chart above. The Library of Congress's series of extant parts begins with No. 63-64 (quires 84-86); if, as I assume, the last quire in No. 51-52 was quire 70, then the ten intervening parts, Nos. 53-62, consist of thirteen rather than the fifteen quires regularly to be expected, and thus two of these intervening double Numbers are short a quire. In the Anglo American notices and on original printed wrappers in the Boston Public Library collection, issue numbers are linked with play titles as follows: Nos. 53-54 and 55-56, AYL; Nos. 57-58 and 59-60, MND; No. 61-62, MM; No. 63-64, Tmp. Doubtless some of these issues contain pages from a play beside the one named on the wrapper, but from the assumption that an issue is likely to bear the title of the play printed on the majority of its pages, I deduce that Nos. 53-54 and 57-58 were the short issues, consisting of quires 71-72 and 76-77 respectively. The conjectural division of plays among parts in the table above reflects this conclusion; in any case, other possible divisions are not likely to make any difference in the month(s) of issue of each play as a whole.

The order of comedies in the bound volumes, as indicated by a Contents page supplied in 1847, is TGV, Err., Shr., Ado, LLL, MV, Wiv., TN, AYL, MND, MM, Tmp., AWW, WT; this is neither the order of publication nor the order of composition described by Verplanck in his essay "Order of the Plays" (1:xi-xvi), but a compromise, approaching as nearly as possible to Verplanck's chronology without the necessity of cutting apart quires in order to separate plays printed on conjugate pages. Cymbeline, Troilus, and Pericles are included among the Tragedies, in the next volume.

The first pages of Tim. share No. 69-70 with the last pages of AWW, and Harper's clearly intended now to complete the remaining tragedies; but two lengthy interruptions of printing attest to difficulties complicating that process. No. 69-70 appeared in mid-October, with the beginning pages of Tim. in quires 92-94; the rest of Tim. is delayed a month and a half until early December (Anglo American, 20 Dec., 6:212), in quires 95-96 of No. 71-72. I know of no reason for this hiatus. A short time later occurs another delay in printing, this time of more than three months. On 27 Dec. Anglo American (6:236) announces No. 73-74, Coriolanus (quires 98-99), but not until 11 April the next year does it notice (6:597) No. 75-76 (which was deposited for copyright on 14 April), and another month passes before it notices (9 May, 7:71) the appearance of No. 77-78. The reason for the long delays in early 1846 is given in the notice of 11 April: "We are happy to observe that this truly elegant edition . . . has been resumed by Messrs. Harpers: the delay having been caused by the loss of plates at the late fire." Perhaps to make up for lost time, Harper's doubled its rate of production shortly thereafter: as is clear from notices two or three times a month in Anglo American, from June 13 through September Harper's without fail published a double Number every week, at the end of which time they had completed more than half of the third and last volume, the Histories.

The probable schedule of publication for those tragedies not previously published by Hewet is as follows:

• 1845: Pts. 69-72, Oct.-Dec., Tim.; 72-74, Dec., Cor. (incomplete)
• 1846: Pt. 75, Apr., Cor. (completed); 76-79, JC, Apr.-May; 79-83, May-June, Ant.; 83-87, June, Tro.; 87-90, June-July, Tit.; [90]-93, July, Per.

The Library of Congress owns most of these parts but lacks Nos. 83-92 (quires 111-123). Since here again a run of ten parts includes only thirteen rather than fifteen quires, the distribution of these quires among the double Numbers is uncertain. Since previously there have never been two short issues in succession, and since the ends of Tro. and Tit. make convenient breaking points, I conjecture that the two short issues (two quires, 24 pages) are Nos. 85-86 (quires 114-115) and 89-90 (quires 119-120). Two bits of evidence may give some slight support to this conjecture. In noticing No. 87-88, Anglo American (4 July 1846, 7:262) discourses on the lack of literary merit of its play, Titus Andronicus; if the majority of pages in this issue are from Tit., it must consists of at least quires 117 and 118, and for that to be possible no more than one of the two numbers preceding it could have been short numbers. In its next issue (11 July, 7:285) Anglo American does not name the play title(s) of No. 89-90 but singles it out for special praise for its illustrations "by the magic pencil of Kenny Meadows and the graver of Hewet"; this description fits well with the two quires I have conjectured for this number, since quire 119 has a higher number of engravings than usual, and quire 120 contains the full-page frontispiece engraving for Per. Such evidence gives only the slightest support at best, and in any case other possible divisions of the quires can make virtually no difference in the month of issue of these plays.

The last of the "tragedies," Per., shares a quire with the beginning of Jn.,

and the histories, none of which Hewet had published, now follow in order of reign. Through September Harper's maintained a rate of production of a double Number every week. From October until the completion of H8 in early 1847, production slowed to about a double Number every two weeks. The Anglo American for 9 Jan. 1847 (8:286) announces No. 129-130, which ends exactly with the completion of H8, and on 6 Feb. (8:382) it describes the next Number, 131-132, as containing Rowe's Life, part of the introductory matter intended to be bound in the Histories volume. The probable timetable of publication for the histories is as follows:

• 1846: Pts. 93-96, July, Jn.; 97-99, Aug., R2; 100-103, Aug., 1H4; 104-107, Aug.-Sept., 2H4; 107-111, Sept., H5; 111-114, Sept., 1H6; 115-118, Oct., 2H6; 118-121, Oct.-Nov., 3H6; 121-126, Nov. [-Dec.?], R3; 126-128, [Nov.-?] Dec., H8 (incomplete)
• 1847: Pts. 129-130, Jan., H8 (completed)

With the completion of H8 there remained to be published 120 pages of introductory matter, mainly Rowe's Life and a longer biography of Shakespeare abridged from Collier's edition. Since I know of no surviving serial parts containing this material, I can only conjecture their number and format. As of 11 Mar. the copyright records list the deposit of parts only through 134, i.e. through two regular double Numbers after H8, but at least three issues of introductory matter are noticed by Anglo American, on 6 Feb. (8: 382), 20 Feb. (8:430), and 27 Mar. (8:550; "the concluding issue"), each of which must have appeared a week or so earlier, and in all likelihood one or even two others must have appeared in late February or early March. If these were issued in something like the previous format (double issues of either two or three quires), there are only two possibilities: five issues of 24 pages, concluding with No. 139-140, or four issues, two of 36 pages and two of 24, concluding with No. 137-138. Since 36-page issues are preponderant in the edition and 24-page issues the exception, the latter possibility seems the more likely. I assume that the title pages, table of contents, and Verplanck's Preface and essay on the "Order of the Plays" were printed last; since the quires (A and B) containing these preliminaries, together with the final four-page quire K, comprise 24 pages, I think it very likely that these made up the final, short issue, No. 137-138. I conjecture that the 120 introductory pages appeared as follows:

• 1847: Pts. 131-136, late Jan.-Feb. or early Mar., Biographical introductions (quires C-J); 137-138, Mar., Preliminary matter (quires K, A, and B).

The publication of the edition in three volumes under the new title Shakespeare's Plays may have occurred some two or three months after its copyright entry of 17 Feb. 1847. It certainly did not appear before its completion in mid-March, and had probably appeared at least by May, since The Knickerbocker announces its appearance in its June issue (29:580) and reviews it in July (30:77-78).

3. Howard Staunton, ed. Plays of Shakespeare. 3 vols. 1858-60. Serially issued in 50 parts, 1856-60.

Besides being an internationally renowned chess master and author on chess, Howard Staunton (1810-74) produced this complete edition of Shakespeare's plays and in later years a score of articles in which he turned his acute and logical mind to problems of textual emendation in Shakespeare. This edition, with its conservative text, full commentary, selections from critics, and more than eight hundred original illustrations by Sir John Gilbert, was still considered handsome and useful enough in 1979 to be reprinted in a one-volume facsimile and sold widely to a popular readership. The three bound volumes were issued by Routledge in 1858, 1859, and 1860, each when enough of the individually issued parts had appeared to make up a volume. In his own Preface (1:xiv), dated April 1860, Staunton by lapse of memory makes the erroneous remark that has misled later cataloguers and bibliographers: "The present work was begun in Nov. 1857, and has been published month by month in parts up to the first of May, 1860." In fact, as will be seen below, publication of parts began a year earlier in December 1856.

Providing a publication timetable for the edition is a relatively simple matter, since unbound parts survive in their original green paper wrappers; the majority of these are numbered and dated, and since publication was regular, one issue per month, the intervening dates may easily be inferred, the only irregularity being that three or four times a year Routledge issued double Numbers. I am grateful that to my original timetable, reconstructed from an incomplete set of parts at the Folger Library and from scattered issues in the University of Wisconsin Memorial Library, Professor John Hazel Smith contributed confirming and supplementary information from his own complete set of parts. The plays were issued in a very rough approximation of their order of composition. The order of publication of parts is also the order of appearance in the bound volumes, since, as was the case with Verplanck's edition, most of the parts contain pages of two and in some cases three different plays, so that changing the order in binding would have required much cutting apart of quires. In some parts appear title pages and other preliminary matter for the bound volumes, along with inserted printed instructions for the binder. Inside the front paper cover of No. 1 is the announcement, "To be published monthly, in shilling parts [25 cents in the United States]. On the 1st of December, 1856, will be issued . . . the first Part of a new . . . Edition . . . by Howard Staunton." All dates given in brackets in the following timetable are inferred.

• Vol. I. Issued in parts 1856-7; title page dated 1858.
• 1856: Pt. 1, [Dec.], TGV, LLL (incomplete)
• 1857: Pts. 2-3, [Jan.-Feb.], LLL (completed); 3-4, [Feb.-Mar.], Err.; 4-5, [Mar.]-Apr., Rom.; 5-6, Apr.-May, Shr.; 6-7, May-[June], Jn.; 8-9, [June]-July, MND; 9-10, July-Aug., MV; 10-11, Aug.-Sept., R2; 11-12, Sept.-[Oct.], 1H4; 12-14, [Oct.]-Nov., 2H4; 14-15, Nov.-[Dec.], Wiv.; 15-16, [Dec.], Ado
• The double parts are 7-8 [June], 12-13 [Oct.], and 15-16 [Dec.].
• Vol. II. Issued in parts 1858; title page dated 1859.
• 1858: Pt. 17, Jan., AWW; 17-19, Jan.-Mar., H5; 19-20, Mar.-[Apr.], AYL; 20-21, [Apr.], Per.; 21-22, [Apr.]-May, TN; 22-23, May-June, 1H6; 23-24, June, 2H6;

  ---

  197

  
  
  
  24-26, June-Aug., 3H6; 26-27, Aug.-Sept., Tim.; 27-28, Sept., R3; 28-29, Sept.-Oct., MM; 30-31, Nov.-Dec., H8; 31-32, Dec., Cym.
• The double parts are 20-21 [Apr.], 23-24 (June), 27-28 (Sept.), and 31-32 (Dec.) Vol. III. Issued in parts 1859-60; title page dated 1860.
• 1859: Pt. 33, Jan., Tmp.; 34-35, Feb.-Mar., Lr.; 35-36, Mar., Cor.; 37-38, Apr.-May, WT; 38-39, May-June, Tro.; 39-41, June-Aug., Ham.; 41-42, Aug.-Sept., JC; 42-43, Sept.-Oct., Mac.; 43-45, Oct.-Nov., Ant.; 45-46, Nov.-Dec., Tit.; 46, Dec., Oth. (incomplete)
• 1860: Pt. 47, Jan., Oth. (completed); 48, Feb., Ven., Luc.; 48-49, Feb.-May, Son., minor poems; 49-50, May, Preface, Life, Appendices, Glossarial Index.
• The double parts are 35-36 (Mar.), 44-45 (Nov.), and 49-50 (May).

The bound copies in the Folger Library represent both volumes in trade bindings offered by the publisher and others privately bound. In the latter sets the accessory matter in No. 49-50 is bound variously at the end of Vol. III, following order of publication, or at the beginning of either Vol. I or Vol. III. Many library catalogues date their sets 1858-61, and these are also given as the original dates in the 1979 reprint, but so far as I can tell the pages in the 1858-60 and 1858-61 sets are identical.

4. Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke, eds. The Plays of Shakespeare. Cassell's Illustrated Shakespeare. 3 vols., n. d. Serially issued in 270 weekly parts, 1864-69.

Richard Altick in The Cowden Clarkes (1948, pp. 199, 201), calling this "probably the most sumptuous edition of Shakespeare ever prepared for the popular market," says of it, "Altogether, it was a fortunate Victorian home whose parlour boasted [its] three heavy volumes," and names Francis Thompson and George Bernard Shaw as two Victorian sons known to have discovered Shakespeare in these crown-quarto volumes attractively illustrated by the painter H. C. Selous. Unlike Knight, Verplanck, and Staunton, the Cowden Clarkes were well known Shakespeareans when they undertook this edition. Charles Cowden Clarke (1787-1877), friend of Keats, Lamb, Hunt, Shelley, Hazlitt, and Dickens, bookseller, publisher, author, and editor of English classics, was especially famous for his immensely popular lectures on Shakespeare, delivered from 1834 to 1856 and published as Shakespeare-Characters (1863). Mary Victoria Novello Clarke (1809-1898) had already produced her Concordance to Shakespeare (1844-45), The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines (1851-52), and, as Shakespeare's first woman editor (though aided by her husband), a complete Works issued in New York by Appleton in fortnightly parts, 1859-60. Their Cassell's edition is valuable not for its text—as required by Cassell's, they produced a "chastened" (expurgated) text, and on their own convictions omitted Titus altogether—but for a commentary approaching a Variorum's in fullness. The indefatigable Clarkes commented on thousands of words and passages left untouched by previous editors, sometimes pointing out Shakespeare's beauties and points of artistry and subtleties of characterization, often in a moralizing way but usually with knowledge, good sense, originality, and independence of judgment; the majority of the notes, however, are linguistic, employing sometimes to excess Mary's method of cross-reference and comparison to parallel passages in Shakespeare. Though seldom brilliant,

their commentary is painstaking and sensible, and it has been widely assimilated by Furness, William J. Rolfe, and W. J. Craig and other early editors in the Arden edition. Their edition remained popular and was reprinted a number of times to the end of the century.

Cassell's Illustrated Shakespeare, whose three bound volumes bear no dates, has never been dated correctly. Altick (p. 254) says erroneously that it was "issued in weekly parts, February 1864 to March 1868, and then in three volumes." He was misled by Mary Clarke's own statement in My Long Life (1897, p. 160): "We began the work on the 1st of September. It was rather an anxious task, as we had to 'work to time.' The edition was originally brought out in weekly numbers; but we never failed once in regular presupply of the requisite matter for the printers. . . . We finished our annotated edition on the 16th March, 1868, and began our "Shakespeare Key" two days after." But of course her dates are for the writing, not the publishing of the edition; significantly, in a list of Works appended to her Centennial Biographic Sketch of Charles Cowden Clarke (1887) she dates the edition simply 1869, the year when it was in fact completed. In its American issue the edition appeared in thirty parts averaging nine sheets each; the Folger Library owns a set of these parts, all of them unfortunately undated. In W. A. Wright's papers in Trinity College Library, Cambridge, is a letter from Cassell's to Wright dated 31 January 1885 describing the edition's publication in England:

Since I have never run across a set of either the weekly numbers or monthly parts, I have had to reconstruct the approximate schedule of publication from journal notices, particularly dated notices in The Bookseller, and from the numbering of the sheets in the bound volumes. Each weekly part was a sheet folded into four crown-quarto leaves, with at least one page given wholly or mainly to an engraved illustration; these sheets are each numbered consecutively in the lower right corner of the first page. Vol. I, Comedies, is sheets 1-91; Vol. II, Histories, is sheets 92-166; Vol. III, Tragedies, is sheets 167-269; quire 270 is a pair of sheets including title-page and prefatory matter. At a regular rate of one sheet a week, 270 sheets would have taken 5 years and 2 months to publish; if begun in February 1864 the edition would have been completed by late March or early April 1869, as Cassell's letter to Wright indicates was the case. That the publication was at a regular rate is confirmed by the sporadic journal notices I have found. The following conjectural timetable probably is close to the facts.

The first sheet must have appeared at the very beginning of February. A full-page advertisement in The Bookseller for 31 Dec. 1863 (p. 981) announces a new edition of Shakespeare "In Weekly Numbers, price One Penny, and in Monthly Parts, price Fivepence and Sixpence. . . . No. I., ready January 29th." A notice for 30 January 1864 (p. 19) announces "Cassell's

Illustrated Shakespeare. No. I. Now ready." From these trade notices to booksellers and from the letter from Cassell's to Wright quoted above, I assume that No. 1 went on sale on about 1 Feb. 1864 (a Monday, and the beginning of the month), and I have used that approximate date as the basis for the rest of the timetable that follows. Assuming a beginning on 1 Feb. 1864, one would expect Vol. I to be complete (with the publication of Part 91) at about 23 Oct. 1865. A notice in The Bookseller of 30 Sept. 1865 (p. 607) announces "Vol. 1 (Comedies) . . . End of Oct.," and another on 31 Oct. (p. 695) announces "New Volumes Now Ready," though the volume is not listed (p. 780) in the comprehensive list of books published in October and so must have appeared at the very end of the month or early in November. These dates being consistent with each other, the schedule for Vol. I may be reconstructed as follows:

• Vol. I
• 1864: Pts. 1-6, Feb.-Mar., Tmp.; 6-11, Mar.-Apr., TGV; 11-17, Apr.-May, Wiv.; 17-23, May-July, MM; 23-27, July-Aug., Err.; 28-33, Aug.-Sept., Ado; 34-40, Sept.-Oct., LLL; 41-46, Nov.-Dec., MND; 46-48, Dec., MV (incomplete)
• 1865: Pts. 49-53, Jan., MV (completed); 53-60, Jan.-Mar., AYL; 60-67, Mar.-May, Shr.; 67-75, May-July, AWW; 76-83, July-Aug., TN; 83-91, Aug.-Oct., WT

Similarly Vol. II, Histories, should have been completed with Part 166 on about 1 April 1867. A notice in The Bookseller for 30 March 1867 (p. 223) announces, "Now ready . . . The Second Volume of Cassell's Illustrated Shakespeare, (Tragedies [an error for Histories] complete)." The volume is listed in the April 30 comprehensive list (p. 348) of "principal English publications for the month ending April 30" but not in the comparable list for 30 March (p. 268), hence it must have gone up for sale in early April. In the April notice it is correctly listed as "Vol. 2, Histories." The approximate schedule is:

• Vol. II.
• 1865: Pts. 92-98, Oct.-Dec., Jn.; 98, Dec., R2 (incomplete)
• 1866: Pts. 99-105, Jan.-Feb., R2 (completed); 105-112, Feb.-Mar., 1H4; 113-120, Mar.-May, 2H4; 121-129, May-July, H5; 129-135, July-Aug., 1H6; 136-143, Sept.-Oct., 2H6; 143-150, Oct.-Dec., 3H6; 150-153, Dec., R3 (incomplete)
• 1867: Pts. 154-159, Jan.-Feb., R3 (completed); 159-166, Feb.-Apr., H8

Finally, one would expect Vol. III, or rather Part 270, to be completed by 29 March 1869. The Bookseller for 1 March 1869 (p. 252) announces "Completion of 'Cassell's Illustrated Shakespeare'. This Magnificent crown 4to Edition . . . will be published in a few days. Complete in Three Volumes." This statement is accurate enough. Exactly by March 1, with the publication of the last part of Pericles (Part 266), the main body of the edition would have been complete. All that remained were Parts 267-9, the Life of Shakespeare, and Part 270, containing preliminary matter, errata, colophon, etc.—the work of "a few days." At the rate of one sheet a week the remaining parts should have been completed by 29 March or, if the last double part took two weeks, by 5 April. The latter date seems less likely because half the pages of that last double part were blank or mostly blank, though perhaps press time for two sheets extended into April. Cassell's letter to Wright says the date of

completion was "about April," and either 29 March or 5 April fits that description well enough. The schedule:

• 1867: Pts. 167-174, Apr.-May, Tro.; 175-184, June-Aug., Cor.; 184-192, Aug.-Sept., Rom.; 192-199, Sept.-Nov., Tim.; 200-205, Nov.-Dec., JC (incomplete)
• 1868: Pt. 206, Jan., JC (completed); 206-213, Jan.-Feb., Mac.; 213-223, Feb.-May, Ham.; 224-223, May-July, Lr.; 233-241, July-Sept., Oth.; 242-250, Sept.-Nov., Ant.; 251-257, Nov.-Dec., Cym. (incomplete)
• 1869: Pts. 258-260, Jan., Cym. (completed); 260-266, Jan.-Mar., Per.; 267-269, Mar., Life; 270, Mar. [-Apr.?], Preface and accessories.

The edition was popular and was reprinted several times. One reprint that I have seen is a completely reset folio in fours, using the plates for the original illustrations and some new type ornaments, and holding over from the original edition an announcement that the Preface and Life "will form [part of] the third and concluding Volume of the Work." A later reprint is from the same plates or stereotypes of them, which show signs of wear, and it includes 35 full-page wood engravings and 35 photogravure plates of 19th-century actors and actresses. It was issued in 6 vols. ("Divisions"). The reprints are undated.

5. John Payne Collier, ed. Plays and Poems. 8 vols. 1878. Serially issued in 43 parts, 1875-78.

At the end of his long and productive life as Shakespearean scholar John Payne Collier (1789-1883), having already done three complete editions of Shakespeare in 1842-44, 1853, and 1858, between his eighty-sixth and eighty-ninth years produced yet a fourth. Collier had the edition privately printed by Thomas Richards, and he sold it in monthly parts to at first fifty and later, when printing costs increased, to fifty-eight subscribers, whom he thanks in a Preface dated 11 Jan. 1878 "for their four-years-continued approbation." In his advertisement to potential subscribers in the Athenaeum of 9 January 1875 (No. 2463, p. 52) he promises a text and notes "avoiding all controversy," and he does in fact withdraw the majority of the controversial emendations from his notorious Perkins Folio that he had included in earlier editions, substituting original quarto or folio readings and numerous new readings. Although in the first issue (Tmp.) Collier remarks that the monthly parts will be "separately paged, in order that they may be arranged according to the wish of each recipient," in fact he expected them to be bound in order of receipt, and at regular intervals issued title pages for each of seven volumes, naming the plays for that volume in their order of appearance. These title pages were included in the issues of Ado, AWW, 1H4, R3, Rom., Lr., and TNK, and are dated 1875 for vols. 1 and 2, 1876 for vols. 3, 4, and 5, and 1877 for vols. 6 and 7. When Collier finally decided to add an eighth volume including the Poems (as well as apocryphal plays) he retroactively changed the title page of the edition from Plays to Plays and Poems and in the final issue included revised title pages for all volumes, dated 1878. Since the bound volumes usually bear these replacement title pages, the edition is cited and catalogued as published in 1878.

In the Folger Library set of unbound parts, tipped into a dozen numbers

—Wiv., MV, AWW, Jn., 1H4, H5, 3H6, Rom., Mac., Oth., Per., and Mucedorus —are notices from Collier announcing the next two or three plays to appear. Since these notices are usually dated, as are the original title pages for the first seven volumes, establishing the sequence and approximate dates for the individual plays is a simple matter. Of the twenty-eight plays mentioned in these notices, all are clearly in the sequence indicated by the seven original title pages, and so we may safely assume that the other plays are in the same sequence. Since more than twelve numbers appeared each year, it is impossible to give exact dates for every issue; instead, in the table below, the plays are listed in sequence and dates are given for those issues in which appear dated notices or title pages:

• Vol. I: Tmp., TGV, Wiv. (notice, n. d.), MM, Err., Ado (t. p., 1875)
• Vol. II: LLL, MND, MV (notice, July 1875), AYL, Shr., AWW (notice, n. d., t. p., 1875)
• Vol. III: TN, WT, Jn. (Dec. 1875), Ed3, R2, 1H4 (notice, Feb. 1876; t. p., 1876)
• Vol. IV: 2H4, H5 (notice, Apr. 1876), 1H6, 2H6, 3H6 (notice, June 1876), R3 (t. p., 1876)
• Vol. V: H8, Tro., Cor., Tit., Rom. (notice, Dec. 1876; t. p., 1876)
• Vol. VI: Tim., JC, Mac. (notice, Feb. 1877), Ham., Lr. (t. p., 1877)
• Vol. VII: Oth. (notice, May 1877), Ant., Cym., Per. (notice, n. d.), TNK (t. p., 1877)
• Vol. VIII: Yorkshire Tragedy, Mucedorus (notice, Oct. 1877), Ven. & Luc., Son. & Misc. Poems (Preface, 11 Jan. 1878; t. p., 1878).

Although Collier's Preface speaks of "Four-years-continued approbation," the time span is really three years, since he advertised for subscribers in Jan. 1875 and completed the edition by Jan. 1878.

Notes