1611900 1893 Shakespeare

 

[Shakespeare, William]; Winter, William; [Irving, Henry]. Shakespeare’s England. New York and London: Macmillan and Co., 1893.

 

Single volume, measuring 7.25 x 5 inches: [6], 254. Full contemporary dark brown crushed morocco, raised bands, spine compartments lettered in gilt, upper board lettered in gilt HENRY IRVING, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. Dozens of black-and-white illustrations and plates throughout text. Pencil notes on Henry Irving, former owner of this book,to verso of front free endpaper and margin of page 241. Text block lightly foxed.   

 

Revised illustrated edition of William Winter’s guide to Shakespeare's England for bookish tourists, first published in 1886. Winter surveys English literary attractions from Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey to the ancient schoolboy’s desk where Will Shakespeare once reputedly sat; he reveals that the ladies who tend Shakespeare’s garden have been known to give favored visitors all the flowers, prettily mounted upon a piece of paper, that poor Ophelia names, in the scene of her madness. This handsomely bound copy belonged to the English actor Henry Irving, whose stage career was the subject of a full-length study by Winter in 1885. A very good example, with a terrific Shakespearean association.