Richard the Third III Shakespeare Limited Editions Club 1940 Bruce Rogers LEC

Description: Richard the Third, by William ShakespearePublished by the Limited Editions Club (1940)Designed by Bruce RogersIllustrated with lithographs by Fritz EichenbergThe text of the First Folio, with Quarto insertionsEdited by Herbert FarjeonPrinted at the Press of A. ColishHardcoverSturdy stitched bindingPaper custom made by the Worthy Paper Company for this editionFolio-sized (8–3/4″ x 13″)Bound in gold-stamped half natural buckram with paper sidesGilded along the top edgePrinted in four colorsLimited to 1950 copies, this being number 1764 Condition Condition is very good. Pages are clean and unmarked, binding is tight. Corners lightly bumped. Endpapers toned. Spine slightly mottled. See pictures for details. Actual item pictured. Regarding Shipping I only charge you what it costs me to ship. If it costs me less to ship, I will refund the difference after I have shipped the item. If it costs me more to ship than the stated shipping charge, I will eat the difference. I ship all items in well-padded boxes. I am glad to combine shipping. Please check my other listings. Actual item pictured. Original Product Description Bruce Rogers designed the format and chose for type an 18-point Anton Janson cut especially for this edition by the Lanston Monotype Company, for he felt this seventeenth-century font would be “bold and vigorous enough to convey to the reader’s eyes something of the rugged Elizabethan quality of the text.” The paper – sixty tons were necessary for the 82,000 volumes of the 1,950 sets – was made particularly for this edition by the Worthy Paper Company. Every detail bears the mark of Rogers’s infinite care and impeccable taste. Even the cover design shows his feeling for what is sentimentally appropriate. Learning that a lovely painted decoration, dating back to 1550, had been recently discovered under many layers of wallpaper in the old house in Oxford that belonged to John Davenant, where the Bard of Avon was wont to lie overnight on his annual journey to Warwickshire, Mr. Rogers obtained sketches of this mural and reproduced it on the cover. So, when one looks at the outside of one of the books, one probably sees the very design that Shakespeare himself saw when he woke up in his friend’s bedroom after a long night of words and wassail, for John Davenant was a vintner and kept only the best. The First Folio, as it has now become known, was both the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays and the first time that a prestigious folio format was dedicated entirely to plays. It was first published in 1623 with the title “Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories & Tragedies” and contained thirty-six of Shakespeare’s plays, with Pericles, Prince of Tyre and The Two Noble Kinsmen being absent. It provided updated versions of eighteen plays that were previously published in quarto versions prior to 1623, but more importantly, it was the first time another eighteen had ever been published, as no manuscripts for these plays have ever been found. Plays appearing for the first time included Macbeth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, Twelfth Night and The Tempest. It is therefore not surprising that it is considered to be the most important work of English Literature ever published. By the last count, two hundred and twenty-eight copies still exist today out of an estimated seven hundred and fifty that were published. The language used at the time is now referred to as Early Modern English, a version that is easily readable when compared to the current orthography of English. It includes charming little qualities like the long ‘s’; the use of ‘u’ and ‘v’, and ‘i’ and ‘j’, to represent different forms of the same letter; and the slient ‘e’ appended to the end of words. However, while editing the text for the Nonesuch Shakespeare, Fargeon amended the text of the First Folio to make it slightly more readable by, among other things, replacing the use of the long ‘s’ with the typical ‘s’ that we now use today and treating ‘u’ and ‘v,’ and ‘i’ and ‘j,’ as separate letters. This is the version of the text that is used in the LEC Shakespeare, which comes as no surprise when one considers that George Macy was a member of the Board of Directors of the Nonesuch Press during the publication of the Nonesuch Shakespeare from 1929–1933, and by the time of the publication of the LEC Shakespeare had become the owner.

Price: 100 CAD

Location: Toronto, Ontario

End Time: 2024-12-17T02:04:40.000Z

Shipping Cost: 24.88 CAD