The history of English dramatic poetry to the time of Shakespeare

Second of 3 vols. in 8vo. pp. vi, 488. There are four copies in this collection. The present is in original blue glazed calico cloth, rebacked. One of six copies printed on large paper. Collier’s copy (his sale, 1884, lot 104), with his note on the whereabouts of the other five in the first volume. Includes foldout frontispieces and title vignettes.

The present work, the first systematic study of English drama as a genre, consists of three parts, being the annals of the stage, annals of dramatic poetry, and an account of theaters and their appurtenances, Collier had been working on this project of collecting a mass of biographical, bibliographical, socio-historical, and archaeological date for about 15 years while simultaneously conducting full-time reporting, theatre reviewing and legal work. However, the actual completion of the physical preparation and research had been a hectic process. At least fifteen works mentioned in this book are new fabrications or forgeries – biographical, literary, socio-historical – through which Collier escalated his mischief from whimsical journalistic hoaxing to solemn scholarly fraud. See A. & J. Freeman, John Payne Collier. Scholarship and Forgery in the Nineteenth Century. New Haven, 2004, I, pp. 149-212; II, A16.

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