1932 ❧ The chef-d'œuvre of the Nonesuch Press. [NONESUCH PRESS]. SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM. 1564-1616. The Works. The Text of the First Folio with Quarto Variants and a Selection of Modern Readings. Edited by Herbert Farjeon. London: Printed by the Nonesuch Press for Cambridge University Press, 1929-1933. 7 volumes, 8vo (234 x 150 mm). Printed in Monotype Fournier, with some letters redesigned for this work. Tan niger morocco by A.W. Bain, spines gilt-lettered, uncut, top edge colored pale pink and gilt 'in the rough.' LIMITED EDITION, number 320 of 1,600 copies, of which 1,050 were intended for distribution in Britain and Ireland and 550 for distribution in the United States. The chef-d'œuvre of the Nonesuch Press, and one of the great achievements of twentieth-century private-press publishing. The Nonesuch Shakespeare was conceived as an attempt to establish a definitive and highly readable modern text while remaining as faithful as possible to the earliest printed witnesses. Farjeon's text is based principally on the First Folio of 1623, supplemented by quarto readings and a selection of modern emendations, the latter unobtrusively supplied in the margins. The extraordinary typographic conception was the work of Francis Meynell, whose design exploits the qualities of Monotype Fournier to produce pages of exceptional clarity and rhythm. The type was specially adapted for the edition, including redesigned capitals, while the unusually fine Pannekoek paper gives the printing a delicacy and precision particularly suited to Meynell's restrained designs. Decorative title pages and play headings, together with the carefully considered hierarchy of type, make the seven volumes an exemplary marriage of editorial scholarship and book design. Contemporary accounts regarded the set as the high point of the Nonesuch programme. The editorial scope was deliberately expansive. In addition to the plays and poems generally accepted as Shakespeare's, the final volume includes three works in which Shakespeare was believed to have collaborated: The Two Noble Kinsmen, Edward III, and Sir Thomas More. Their inclusion reflected the Nonesuch Press's desire for completeness and, not incidentally, helped bring the seventh volume to approximately the same physical bulk as its predecessors. The production was an unusually ambitious undertaking for the Press. The combination of Farjeon's careful textual scholarship, Meynell's typography, Cambridge University Press's printing, and Bain's understated but exceptionally handsome bindings resulted in what has long been regarded as the outstanding production of the Nonesuch Press. Dreyfus 58; The Nonesuch Century, 58. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing