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‘A Descriptive Bibliography of Quarto Editions of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar’
Titre du projet
‘A Descriptive Bibliography of Quarto Editions of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar’
Description
W. M. Keck Foundation Fellowship to work at The Huntington Library, California, USA (2 months)
Julius Caesar is one of Shakespeare’s best-known plays and yet its publication history remains unclear and understudied. Indeed, most libraries continue to catalogue early quarto editions under incorrect dates. Julius Caesar was published in the 1623 first Shakespeare folio, but the first single-play edition was not published until 1684, when Henry Herringman and Richard Bentley brought out a quarto edition. Another edition was published by the same stationers in 1691 and four undated quarto editions were also published. As I have demonstrated elsewhere, by the late seventeenth century, Hamlet and Julius Caesar had become the most frequently printed Shakespeare plays, with editions produced both by stationers who held the rights in copy and by pirate publishers. My project has two main aims. I will produce a descriptive bibliography of Julius Caesar quartos in order to provide a clear guide to the order of printing, number of editions, and number of issues and states for each edition. This will be the first descriptive bibliography dedicated to Julius Caesar since Henrietta C. Bartlett’s, and I will consult more copies than any previous work on these quartos. My second aim is to use paper evidence to date at least two of the undated quartos and identify the pirate publisher(s) who financed their production. The results will be submitted as articles to Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America (PBSA). In 2020 I will submit a proposal to the Malone Society to edit the first quarto of Julius Caesar and a short-term fellowship at the Huntington Library will thus also be of benefit to this future editing project.
Julius Caesar is one of Shakespeare’s best-known plays and yet its publication history remains unclear and understudied. Indeed, most libraries continue to catalogue early quarto editions under incorrect dates. Julius Caesar was published in the 1623 first Shakespeare folio, but the first single-play edition was not published until 1684, when Henry Herringman and Richard Bentley brought out a quarto edition. Another edition was published by the same stationers in 1691 and four undated quarto editions were also published. As I have demonstrated elsewhere, by the late seventeenth century, Hamlet and Julius Caesar had become the most frequently printed Shakespeare plays, with editions produced both by stationers who held the rights in copy and by pirate publishers. My project has two main aims. I will produce a descriptive bibliography of Julius Caesar quartos in order to provide a clear guide to the order of printing, number of editions, and number of issues and states for each edition. This will be the first descriptive bibliography dedicated to Julius Caesar since Henrietta C. Bartlett’s, and I will consult more copies than any previous work on these quartos. My second aim is to use paper evidence to date at least two of the undated quartos and identify the pirate publisher(s) who financed their production. The results will be submitted as articles to Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America (PBSA). In 2020 I will submit a proposal to the Malone Society to edit the first quarto of Julius Caesar and a short-term fellowship at the Huntington Library will thus also be of benefit to this future editing project.
Chercheur principal
Statut
Completed
Date de début
1 Janvier 2021
Date de fin
1 Janvier 2022
Organisations
Identifiant interne
45866
identifiant