{"product_id":"1454200-1824-james-boaden","title":"1454200 1824 James Boaden.  A Survey of Shakespeare Portraits.","description":"10135.\n\u003cdiv align=\"center\"\u003e\u003cspan size=\"4\" style=\"font-size: large;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJames Boaden.  A Survey of Shakespeare Portraits.  1824.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eBoaden James.  1824.  1824 SURVEY OF SHAKESPEARE PORTRAITS,  LARGE-PAPER COPY, EX-FOLGER LIBRARY.  Boaden, James; [Shakespeare, William]. An Inquiry into the Authenticity of Various Pictures and Prints, which, from the Decease of the Poet to Our Own Times, Have Been Offered to the Public as Portraits of Shakespeare: Containing a Careful Examination of the Evidence on which They Claim to be Received; by which the Pretended Portraits Have Been Rejected, the Genuine Confirmed and Established. Illustrated by Accurate and Finished Engravings, by the Ablest Artists, from Such Originals as were of Indisputable Authority. London: Robert Triphook, 1824.  Quarto, measuring 10.75 x 8 inches: [2], vi, 143, [1]. Contemporary three-quarter brown calf, spine ruled and lettered in gilt, marbled boards. Five full-page engraved portraits of Shakespeare inserted throughout text, some tissue-guarded. Endpapers browned and annotated, with offsetting from laid-in clippings; early bookseller description of another copy of this edition mounted to front free endpaper. Two bookplates to front pastedown, Folger Library deaccession stamp to rear free endpaper. Binding rubbed.  First edition, large-paper copy, of playwright James Boaden’s comparative study of seventeenth-century portraits said to depict William Shakespeare, an increasingly contested field. \"In about 1770, a wave of ‘original’ pictures of Shakespeare began to appear, and dozens more followed over the next two centuries . . . consumed hungrily by a public content not to ask many questions\" (Nolen, Shakespeare’s Face). Specialized forgers, most notably Edward Holder and F.W. Zincke, were actively transforming scores of old paintings into plausible representations of the Bard in the early nineteenth century.      Boaden takes only the most canonical portraits as his subject, leaving the exposé of recent forgeries to his contemporary Abraham Wivell. He includes engraved reproductions of Droeshout’s frontispiece to the First Folio and Marshall’s frontispiece to the 1640 edition of Shakespeare’s poems, as well as “the Chandos Head,” “the Stratford Monument,” and a Cornelius Jansen portrait rumored to be Shakespeare, represented here in a particularly fine mezzotint. Boaden examines several other possible contemporary likenesses as well, and even analyzes \"the poetic character\" of Shakespeare through the verses written about him in his day.   In the end, no conclusive evidence exists to establish the historic face of Shakespeare  then or now -- so the interest of Boaden’s essay is largely as an example of obsessive nineteenth-century Shakespeare fandom: by the aid of picture, to enjoy him in private life; to sit with him in the same room; and, while we have before us the inspirations of his mind, to catch the characteristic look of his meditation, or perhaps the smile with which he brightened his familiar circle. This large-paper quarto, scarcer than the octavo, was deaccessioned from the Folger Library, which retains multiple copies of both quarto and octavo editions. A very good example of a classic of Shakespeare reception studies.\u003c\/div\u003e\nGood","brand":"1824","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41033790128301,"sku":"10135","price":750.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0284\/7646\/products\/10135.jpg?v=1636224981","url":"https:\/\/www.nrarities.com\/products\/1454200-1824-james-boaden","provider":"The Gillespie Collection","version":"1.0","type":"link"}