Pericles Prince of Tyre. A novel by George Wilkins, printed in 1608, and founded upon Shakespeare’s play. Edited by Professor Tycho Mommsen. With a preface by the editor; and an introduction by J. Payne Collier Esq.

4to. ff. [3], pp. xxxvi, 80, [2]. Signed on front wrapper by John Russell Smith. “Now Shakspere Society 11 April 1870” inked on half title. Export stamp of the grand duchy of Oldenburg on verso of title page. Contains facsimile title pages of “Shake-speares sonnets. Never before Imprinted” (London, By G. Eld for T[homas] T[homas] and are to be solde by Iohn Wrigth, 1609 (p. xxv)) and of “The Painfull Adventures of Pericles Prince of Tyre. Being The true History of the Play of Pericles, as it was lately presented by the worthy and ancient Poet John Gower” (London, Printed by T.P. for Nat. Butter, 1608 (p. 1). 

The present work is an edition of the prose version of ‘Pericles, Prince of Tyre,’ which was published in 1609 as a play by William Shakespeare. The inn-keeper George Wilkins (d. 1618) was the author of the original novel and likely had collaborated with Shakespeare to dramatize the work. Tycho Mommsen, the principal of the college at Oldenburg and a champion of the Perkins folio, had been able to find an exemplar of the 1608 novel in the Stadtbibliothek of Zurich and had it reprinted with an introduction of his friend John Payne Collier. This Swiss copy contained a hitherto unknown dedicatory epistle by Wilkins. See A. & J. Freeman, John Payne Collier. Scholarship and Forgery in the Nineteenth Century. New Haven, 2004, I, pp. 701-707.

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