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- 64 SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE
and two have facsimile title-pages; of the remaining eight, three have the Aspley imprint and five the Wright imprint. Of the eleven copies, eight are in England, and three in private libraries in America. Of the British copies six are in public collections. The Earl of Ellesmere and Mr. Huth seem to be the only private English owners.¹
THE EDITION OF 1609.
Description.
The original edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets appeared with two title-pages varying in the name of the bookseller in the imprint. One issue ran:—
SHAKE-SPEARES | SONNETS | Neuer before Imprinted. | AT LONDON | By G. Eld for T. T. and are | to be solde by William Aspley. | 1609.
The title-page of the other issue ran:—
SHAKES-PEARES | SONNETS | Neuer before Imprinted. | AT LONDON | By G. Eld for T. T. and are | to be solde by John Wright, dwelling | at Christ Church gate. | 1609.
The volume is printed in quarto, containing in all forty leaves. Signature A, consisting of two leaves only, contains the title-page and dedication. The text of the Sonnets begins on signature B and ends on K recto. On K verso begins ‘A Louers complaint. | By | William Shake-speare’, and it ends with the close of the volume on L2 verso. Thus the signatures run:—A (two leaves), B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K in fours, and L (two leaves). There is no pagination; the leaves A1, A2, C4, D4, E4, F4, G4, H4, I4, are unsigned.
No. I.
British Museum.
Of the copies in the British Museum, that in the Grenville
¹ It is impossible to determine whether the three copies mentioned in the following sale catalogues can be rightly identified with any of the eleven enumerated copies, or whether they had, and have, a separate existence:—
1. A copy in the library of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, which was sold by the bookseller Osborn, of Gray’s Inn, in 1742.
2. A copy in the Duke of Marlborough’s library at White Knights, sold in 1819 for £37.
3. A copy in the collection of James Boswell the younger, which was sold in 1825 for £38 17s. od.
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