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Shakespeare, William.
THE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE. IN SIX VOLUMES. Carefully REVISED and CORRECTED by the former EDITIONS, and ADORNED with SCULPTURES designed and executed by the best hands.
Publisher: Printed at the Theatre [i.e. Sheldonian Theatre] Oxford;
Date of Publication: 1743
Stock Code: 8939
Quarto, complete in six volumes. With 39 copper-engraved plates: Illustrated by Francis Hayman and engraved by Hubert Gravelot. Bound in contemporary full speckled calf with double gilt fillet frames and corner ornaments to boards; gilt foliate rolls to board edges, six raised bands; gilt coronet ornaments and titles to spine compartments; marbled end-papers, red speckled edges. A sound set in a good contemporary binding, albeit with five volumes wanting spine labels and minor loss at spine tips. Joints and hinges cracked but holding, some minor scuffing to boards. With the 1816 Robert (or possibly Thomas) Bewick engraved armourial bookplate of Newcastle Upon Tyne banker Charles William Bigge (1773 - 1849) to each ffep. The first edition of Shakespeare’s works to be printed in England outside of London and the first to be published at a University Press. Compiled and edited by Sir Thomas Hanmer, Speaker for the House of Commons, this lavishly illustrated work, complete with thirty-nine fine copper engraved plates, was intended as an “édition de luxe” for Hanmer’s peers. The typography is clear and refined and printed on thick, high quality paper with generously wide margins. Walder further emphasises the luxuriousness of this edition in The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, “The print and binding were magnificent, and caused its value to rise to nine guineas, when Warburton’s edition was going for eighteen shillings.” Hanmer’s editing choices, although controversial, offer a fascinating insight into eighteenth century interpretations of Shakespeare’s dramatic works and met with considerable commercial success, selling out within three years. Charles William Bigge of Linden Hall was a noted Northumberland banker, merchant, man of letters, President of the Newcastle Literary, Scientific and Mechanical Institution and High Sheriff of Northumberland amongst many other accomplishments. The radical Newcastle lawyer, Whig reformer and abolitionist James Losh (1763–1833) held Bigge in high regard “... a good classical scholar, a man of extensive reading & well informed on most subjects”. His book plate here is the third that he used that was printed at the Bewick workshop. With two anonymous manuscript leaves of correspondence, in a nineteenth century hand, discussing Shakespeare and a trip to Stratford Upon Avon. An elegant set and an important piece of publishing history. £4000.00