The Letterpress Shakespeare.

Notes

A complete set of a major undertaking: the complete works of Shakespeare in elegant large-format letterpress, set in 16pt Monotype Baskerville with Caslon Display by Gloucester Typesetting Services, with printing requiring the services of three different firms across England and Germany, and the binding in quarter goatskin completed by Lachenmaier in Reutlinge. Each play volume is numbered and presented with a companion volume of the sheets of the Oxford University Press text and commentary of the corresponding work, specially-bound for this edition. The volumes are colour-coded, with the comedies being in green, the histories in blue and the tragedies in red, plus the volume of poetry in turquoise. The project began ambitiously, with the first 12 volumes in a limitation of 3,750 numbered copies (plus 25 lettered); it was then scaled down and the remainder were produced in runs of only 1,000 numbered copies, apart from the poems, for which 1,980 numbered copies (and 20 lettered) were produced. Complete, continuously numbered sets are already difficult to acquire.