Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts, Including Americana

8vo (171 x 108 mm). Wood-engraved printer's device on title page, head- and tail-piece. (Light soiling to title-page at margins.) Contemporary (original?) hand-sewn drab wrappers, uncut. Provenance: numerous holograph revisions in a neat contemporary hand.

FIRST OCTAVO EDITION. "A carefully edited text in which many lines cut in the quarto are restored" (Folger). Though issued here as a separate publication, it was also included in A Collection of the Best English Plays, vol. I (1711), probably bound up as a remainder.

"In Great Britain, except in a few scarce instances, there were no plays of any author published separately in small 8vo or 12mo form until after Rowe's 1714 edition, whereas T. Johnson, bookseller at The Hague, by 1712 had published at least forty, nine of them being either Shakespeare's or based on his plays. Many of them found their way here, and the passing of the 4to and the advent of the 12mo may be largely attributed to the Dutch publisher...The plays published at The Hague were printed on exceptionally good paper, in good clear type, and not inferior to the best productions of the London printers..." (Ford, p.47).

VERY RARE: according to online records, this edition has appeared only once at auction in the past century (Henkels 1916). ESTC N17297; Ford 42; Jaggard, p.308.