Shakespeare's Works

Forty Volumes

edited by William J. Rolfe

with engravings

New York & London:  Harper & Brothers, 1898; New York - Cincinnati - Chicago:  American Book Company [ND]

Hardback set is overall in VERY GOOD condition.

• Russet red covers are mostly clean, with blind tooled border and pebble texture.
  • As You Like It has a few ink marks to cover.   
• Boards show some smudges, dimpling to cloth, scuffing, edgewear.  Corners are variously bumped, scuffed.  
• Spines have gilt text, some dimmed, with bumped ends.
• Bindings are strong. 
• Pastedowns and feps have some marks as follow:
  • Twelfth Night, The Winter's Tale: "Marion Xmas 1905" on front fep.
  • A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Hamlet: "Frances C. Woolaver" on front fep.
  • Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Merry Wives of Windsor, Titus Andronicus, Othello, Coriolanus, Love's Labor Lost:  all marked "Henry W. Underhill '01" on front fep.
  • Merchant of Venice, Macbeth:  marked "Henry W. Underhill" on front fep, with SOLD stamp from Friends' Academy Locust Hill NY.  
• Frontispieces are engraved illustrations. 
• Illustrations are bright and clear. 
• Interiors are gently age-toned.  Inside pages are free of writing and intentional marks.
• Text block edges have publisher's red ink on all edges.  Loss of some color on some edges.  See photos. 
• PS2024.1107

5 x 6.75 inches

A full set of "Rolfe's Shakespeare," overall in Very Good condition. Each pocket-sized volume includes notes on the text, notes on the story, engraved illustrations, and an index of words and phrases, explained.  Volumes measure 5 x 6 3/4 inches.  All have russet red covers, pebbled, with blind tooled borders and large gilt titles on the spines. 

William James Rolfe (1827-1910), Amherst educated and a high school headmaster,  prepared this complete edition of Shakespeare for Harper & Brothers – the Friendly Edition (forty volumes, 1870–83; new edition, 1903–07).  Rolfe's editions proved to be the best-selling versions in America (during a time of increased use of Shakespeare in high school classrooms), due both to his credentials as a high school administrator and to his use of Bowdlerization of the text in order to remove much of Shakespeare's lewd content.  The American Book Company acquired the imprint from Harper & Brothers, and in their sales notices referred to it as the "standard annotated edition of Shakespeare for educational purposes." 

This is a full set, with all forty volumes, but it is not a single set.  All but four of the volumes are American Book Company.  Four -- Richard II, Titus Andronicus, Merchant of Venice, and Macbeth -- are Harper & Brothers.

Two volumes have an interesting provenance.  A Midsummer-Night's Dream and Hamlet are inscribed "Frances C. Woolaver" on the front fep.  Frances Woolaver (b. 1879) lived in Princeton NJ.  The Hamlet volume has further markings, the imprint left by a paperclip and shadow on blank feps from a possible enclosure.  Beneath Frances C. Woolaver's name is penned in "Maurice Evans played Hamlet, McCarther Theater 1939, Frances Mary Brown."  This Frances would be Frances Mary Brown Yokana (1926-2018), the daughter of Frances Churchill Woolaver Brown and a lifelong resident of Princeton.   

Please see photos. More photos available upon request.

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