The Dramatick Writings of William Shakspere, a complete, 38-volume set of Bell's Edition in contemporary full calf by William Shakespeare, edited by Samuel Johnson and George Steevens, with prefaces by Heminge and Condell, Pope, Theobald, Hanmer, Warburton, Steevens, and Johnson - 1785: Printed Complete from the Text of Samuel Johnson and George Steevens and Revised from the Last Editions

London: Printed for and under the direction of John Bell, British-Library, Strand, 1785. Full leather. This is a complete, 38-volume set of John Bells edition of the plays of William Shakespeare. The set is uniformly bound in full contemporary calf with gilt-stamped red and black spine author and title labels bracketing gilt-stamped volume number. The board edges feature gilt dentelles. The contents are bound with head and tail bands. Each volume measures approximately 5.875 x 3.75 inches (14.9 x 9.5 cm). All 38 volumes feature engraved title pages dated 1785 (22 volumes), 1786 (14 volumes), or 1788 (2 volumes). Each title page specifies Printed for, and under the Direction of, | John Bell, British-Library, Strand.

Condition of the set is good plus. The contemporary calf bindings are complete, intact, and unrestored, though of course showing appreciable age and wear, including partial loss of some spine labels and volume numbers. The contents appear notably clean and complete throughout, with minimal spotting, toning, or soiling. We note only one nearly loose signature, at the beginning of Volume 29, still affixed by a single binding cord. The only previous ownership marks we find are in Volume I, whose front pastedown bears a fathers gift inscription, in Latin, dated Dec. 1821. At the head of the facing front free endpaper recto is what may be booksellers notation (Bound in 38 vol) in a hand and faded ink that certainly does not appear any more recent than the gift inscription.

The publisher, John Bell (1745-1831), was a bookseller and a printer who was a major player in the London book trade One of his claims to fame is being the printer with the curious distinction of having discontinued the use of the long s. (Folger Shakespeare Library) Bell's edition of Shakespeare was reprinted serially from this 1785 edition on, with new illustrations commissioned from young artists including Edward Francis Burney and Johann Heinrich Ramberg. The text is that of the Johnson and Steevens edition, "considered the best edition that had appeared up to that time, and long regarded as the standard." (Grolier Shakespeare's Plays, 19)

This complete, 38-volume edition includes the George Steevens and Samuel Johnson text, as well as a two-volume Prologomena. Comprising the first two volumes, Bells Prolegomena, contains prefaces to Shakespeares works from previous commentators (among them Heminge and Condell, Pope, Theobald, Hanmer, Warburton, Johnson, and Steevens), a biography of the playwright, as well as essays on modern performance practice, print history and Shakespeares sources. Bell dedicated the work to the Prince of Wales (later George IV).

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history. He published a long-delayed edition of Shakespeares work in late 1765. Shakespearean commentator George Steevens (1736-1800) had contributed textual and usage notes to Johnsons 1765 effort, as well as producing his own 1766 edition of Twenty of the Plays of Shakespeare. Their subsequent collaboration, allegedly suggested by Johnson, resulted in the text used in this work.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) - whom the late literary critic and scholar Harold Bloom claimed invented the human by altering our collective consciousness - left a legacy that is difficult to overstate. His stature so dominates English letters as to verge on biblical proportions. It is symbolically informative that Shakespeare is often assumed to have been born on 23 April, St. Georges Day, so that Englands national poet and their patron saint would share the same day of celebration, akin to the assertion of Christs birthday onto the winter solstice. It is noteworthy to consider that when this edition was published, a quarter of a millennium ago, Shakespeare was already so much a staple of English letters that the first two volumes of this collection are filled with august and some, in 1785, already venerable commentary and erudition.