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- FIRST EDITION, 1593. No. I. Bodleian (Malone) copy of 1593.
Of the first edition, which is reproduced in this volume, only a single copy is known to exist. It is among the books which belonged to Edmund Malone, the Shakespearean commentator, and are now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The story of Malone’s acquisition of the rare volume is interesting. At the outset of his career as a Shakespearean commentator he sought in vain for any early edition of *Venus and Adonis*. In his behalf, Thomas Longman, ‘book-seller, of Paternoster Row,’ offered, without result, a guinea for that of 1593 in an advertisement in the *St. James’s Chronicle* on April 15, 1779. In 1780, in his ‘Supplement to the edition of Shakespeare’s plays’² which Dr. Johnson and George Steevens had jointly prepared in 1778, he issued a text of the dramatist’s ‘genuine poetical compositions’. But he found it impossible to print *Venus and Adonis* ‘from the original copies’. ‘Though much inquiry was made for it,’ Malone wrote in the Advertisement, ‘the editor has not been able to procure the first edition.’³ He acknowledged, however, the loan from Dr. Farmer ‘of a copy of that poem published in 1600’. Dr. Farmer’s copy, which was without a title-page, is now in the Bodleian Library with Malone’s books (see No. VIII, *infra*).⁴ A few years after the publication of his text
¹ Much information respecting the extant copies of *Venus and Adonis* is collected in Justin Winsor’s valuable, but inaccessible, *Shakespeare’s Poems: a bibliography of the earlier editions* (Library of Harvard University, Bibliographical Contributions, No. 2, Cambridge, Mass., 1879). Valuable suggestions are made in the *Cambridge Shakespeare*, vol. 38, 1895, preface; in Charles Edmond’s *Preface* (v-xxii) to *Venus and Adonis from the hitherto unknown edition of 1599* (1870), and in Lowndes’ *Bibliographer’s Manual* (ed. H. G. Bohn, s. v. Shakespeare, 1864). I have personally inspected most of the volumes described which remain in England. I owe my main knowledge of those in America to descriptions furnished by their present owners. I have to thank the American collectors, Mr. Robert Hue, Mr. H. C. Folger, jr., and Mr. Marsden J. Perry, for courteous replies to my inquiries.
² On April 29, 1779, Malone wrote to the Earl of Charlemont, ‘Do you happen to be possessed of any ancient edition of Shakespeare’s poem of
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VENUS AND ADONIS 57
of the poem in 1780, Malone discovered a copy of the edition of FIRST EDITION, 1593. 1596, and he noted down thirty-nine variations on his private copy of his reprint of the edition assigned to 1600.¹ It was not until August, 1805, that Malone’s search for the original edition of 1593 was rewarded with success. In that month he acquired for what he called ‘the enormous price of twenty-five pounds’ from William Ford, a bookseller of Manchester, a copy of the edition of 1593. With the Venus and Adonis was bound up a copy of Licia, or poems of Love, by Venus and Adonis? The booksellers have repeatedly advertized for the earliest copy of it, but have not yet been able to get it.² The Earl replied on May 10, ‘I am not possessed of any ancient copy of the Venus and Adonis’ (MSS. of James, 1st Earl of Charlemont, Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Report, App. Part x, 1891, vol. i, 1745–83, p. 347). The following two letters from W. Ford of Manchester, the seller of the volume of 1593 to Malone, are in the Bodleian Library and are here printed for the first time. They are bound up in a volume of Malone’s letters, numbered SC 28578 (ff. 156 c, 156 f):—
‘Manchester, July 20, 1805.
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