8 volumes, 8vo (203 x 122 mm). Frontispiece portrait of Shakespeare. (Offsetting from plate to title-page in vol.1); half-titles in vols. 2-8. Contemporary calf (spines worn with horizontal splits, covers detached, textblock split and detached on vol.3). Provenance: J. Eaton (ownership signatures on front free endpapers).

FIRST SAMUEL JOHNSON EDITION of Shakespeare's plays that was the "foundation of hundreds of subsequent issues" (Jaggard). FIRST ISSUE with Corbet listed as the second bookseller and Johnson's preface unpaginated. The occasion of the bicentennial of Shakespeare's birth attracted new editorial attention to his plays, of which this edition of Samuel Johnson is the most notable example. It is especially noteworthy for its strong (and new) affirmation of the textual primacy of the First Folio of 1623. Johnson wrote in the notes that the First Folio "is equivalent to all others, and the rest only deviate from it by the printer's negligence." Lowndes acknowledged that it was "superior to any of its predecessors, and the preface commanded universal admiration." Chapman and Hazen pp.146-147 (canceled leaves not visible); Jaggard, p.501.