Large folio (432 x 343 mm). 26 engraved plates, 3 hand-colored, many full-page. (Spotting throughout, some offsetting to plates.) Contemporary tree calf (covers detached, first few leaves of text detached with upper cover, fore-corners and spine ends worn). Provenance: unidentified armorial bookplate.

FIRST EDITION OF SAMUEL IRELAND’S CELEBRATED COLLECTION OF SHAKESPEARE FORGERIES, ONE OF THE MOST NOTORIOUS LITERARY HOAXES OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

Samuel Ireland was an English engraver, antiquary, and passionate Shakespeare collector who became embroiled in one of the most notorious literary hoaxes of the eighteenth century. Beginning in 1794, his son, William Henry Ireland (1775-1835), fabricated a remarkable series of supposed Shakespeare manuscripts, including letters, legal documents, a profession of faith, portions of King Lear and Hamlet, and the previously unknown play Vortigern and Rowena. Samuel, apparently unaware of the deception, enthusiastically promoted the discoveries and reproduced many of them in the present work.

The fraud was decisively exposed in 1796 by Shakespeare scholar Edmond Malone, whose An Inquiry into the Authenticity of Certain Miscellaneous Papers and Instruments demonstrated numerous historical, linguistic, and paleographical inconsistencies. William Henry subsequently confessed to creating the documents, although Samuel’s reputation never fully recovered from the scandal.

According to Jaggard "Of the 368 copies printed only 138 survived, including 122 to subscribers, some half-dozen as gifts, and the remainder to the State libraries. The forger's youngest sister Jane supervised the destruction of the copperplates and the rending into waste paper of the other 230 copies". In a note, William Henry Ireland wrote that his father, Samuel Ireland, destroyed all unsold copies of the folio edition once it became known that the Shakespeare documents reproduced therein were forgeries, leaving only 96 in circulation: "Upon my confessing, the sale of the folio was stopped by my father, nor had the octavo edition made its appearance...In order still further to obliterate I committed to the flames the complete impression of the present reprint reserving no more than the annexed copy, which, as a literary curiosity, ranks unique..." Jaggard, p.164.

[Bound in:] WEBB, Francis, Col. ("Philalethes"). Shakespeare's Manuscripts in the Possession of Mr. Ireland, Examined, Respecting the Internal and External Evidences of their Authenticity. London: J. Johnson, 1796. 8vo (229 x 114 mm). Uncut; bound in at end of above. FIRST EDITION.

[With:] IRELAND. The Confessions of William-Henry Ireland. Containing the Particulars of His Fabrication of the Shakespeare Manuscripts... London: Ellerton and Byworth for Thomas Goddard, 1805. 8vo (191 x 114 mm). 2 engraved plates. (Plates toned). Modern buckram. FIRST EDITION. Jaggard, p.164.