Eric Chaim Kline, Bookseller - Old and Rare Books

Shakespeare's A Midsommer Nights Dreame Printed from the First Folio of 1623 [SIGNED, LIMITED EDITION]

Shakespeare, William; Harley Granville-Barker; Paul Nash (illus.)

London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1924. Limited edition. Hardcover. Royal quarto. liii, [3], 71, [1, blank], 32 (The Drawings; The Plates in Colour), [1, colophon] pp. Title in red and black; 5 color plates in facsimile collotype; 9 line block prints (on 5 pages). Full vellum (lightly soiled; small defect at the upper joint), richly ornamened and ruled in gilt and blind; spine lettered in gilt; top edge gilt, other edges untrimmed. Covers slighly bowed; a touch of light foxing at the front end-leaf, else a fine copy.

Signed, limited edition, printed at the Shakespeare Head Press, Stratford-upon-Avon. The text is based on the First Folio edition of Shakespeare, with occasional concessions to modern orthography. An unnumbered out-of-series copy, it is, like the 106 numbered copies of the deluxe edition, printed on Batchelor's Kelmscott handmade paper and bound in vellum by Zaehnsdorf, with the signatures of the illustrator Paul Nash, the author of the introduction Harley Granville-Barker, and the art editor Albert Rutherston facing the publisher's advertisement. (An additional 550 unsigned, numbered trade copies were issued in linen-backed boards and printed on cotton rag paper.) The illustrations by Paul Nash comprise set designs and a leaf with costumes for some of the characters. The line blocks were prepared by Emery Walker. One of seven plays in The Players' Shakespeare series, published between 1923 and 1927: Cymbeline; The Merchant of Venice; Macbeth; Loves Labour's Lost; A Midsommer Nights Dreame; Julius Caesar; King Lear.

Provenance: Bookplate of Luella and Sam Maslon. Nearly Fine. Item #54110

Price: $2,500.00