Picturesque Views on the Upper, or Warwickshire Avon

by Ireland, Samuel (William Henry Ireland, William Shakespeare)

[30 Day Return Guarantee] Price: $500.00

Book Description

Faulder, London, 1795. First edition. Quarto, 284 pp., aquatint frontispiece, engraved map, 2 engraved portraits, and 29 sepia aquatints of scenes along the river. Additional illustrations throughout the text. Bound in original or contemporary dark green leather boards with gilt borders (boards quite worn, especially along edges); original marbled endpapers; attractively rebacked with new leather spine; date of 1795 printed at bottom of spine; 6 compartments with worked floral designs; label on spine reads"Ireland's Avon." All plates in excellent condition, with a minimum of foxing or browning; plates protected by linen guards. This copy is INSCRIBED "from the Author" on the top of half-title page; the ink is faded, but the lettering is still legible. Samuel Ireland's name is forever linked with the great Shakespearean hoax perpetrated by his son, William Henry. The hoax was born in 1794 during the preparation of this book by his father, who had gone with his son to Stratford-on-Avon to acquire materials; the son had observed his father's credulous interest in the products of a local Shakespearean forger, and decided to try a little forgery himself. His project, originally modest, grew to grandiose, one would say Shakespearean, proportions, until he was turning out leases, contracts with authors, notes, receipts, a profession of faith, and even a love letter to Anne Hathaway with an enclosed lock of hair. In 1795, when his book on the Avon was published, Samuel was still convinced, along with almost everyone else, that these scraps of paper his son was mysteriously acquiring bore the marks of Shakespeare's pen; he bought them from his son, exhibited them, had them verified by experts, and finally published them in 1795 as "Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments Under the Hand and Seal of William Shakespeare." It would also have been around this time that William Henry was reaching the high-water mark in his career as a forger, with his "discovery" of an entire play by Shakespeare. The hoax came to light shortly after this play was produced on Drury Lane on April 2, 1796; the shouts of laughter which greeted this so-called tragedy made it clear that Shakespeare's style could not be imitated as easily as his handwriting. The father's book on the Avon, published a year earlier, thus must have been written while the hoax was in full flower. Certainly the author's enthusiasm for Shakespeare, whom he calls "the most extraordinary genius this or any other country has ever produced," must have been fueled by the extraordinary forgeries his son was turning out at the time; Shakespeare is present throughout the book, beginning with the frontispiece.

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