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- f4 VENUS AND ADONIS
The small
number of
surviving
copies of
early
editions.
VI
The
strangest
fact
to
be
noticed
in
regard
to
the
bibliography
of
Shakespeare's
Venus and
Adonis
is
that,
though
there
were
at
least
six
editions
issued in the
poet's lifetime
and
seven
in
the
two
generations following
his
death, in
the
case
of
only
two
—
the
second and
the
sixth
—
of these
thirteen
editions
do
as
many
as
three copies
survive.
In
regard
to
the
twelve other
editions,
the
surviving
copies of
each
are
fewer. Of
the
editions
of
ij9<^,
i<$27,
i<^3<^,
and
167^
two
copies
of
each
are
known.
Oi
the editions
of
1593,
15-99, i<Joo,
\6\7
and
1^20,
and
the
two
editions
of
i<^3o,
only
one
copy
survives in
each case.
It
is
quite
possible
that
there
were
editions
in
other
years
of
which
every
copy
has
disappeared.
But
no
more
singular
circumstance
has yet
been
revealed
in
bibliographical history than
that
thirteen
early editions of
a
sixteenth-century
work
should
have beentraced
and only twenty-one exemplars
of
them
all
should be
now known
to
bibliographical research.
It
is
not extrava-
gant to
estimate
that
each
sixteenth-
or
seventeenth-century
edition of Venus and Adonis
averaged
2/0
copies.
On
that
assumption
it
will
be
seen
that 3,729 copies
have
perished
out of the 3,7^0 printed in the sixteenth
and
seventeenth
centuries.
This wholesale mortality
is
doubtless the penalty
the
work
paid
for
its
popularity
and
accessibility.
The
copies were eagerly read and
re-read, were quickly
worn
out
and were carelessly flung
away.
The
present distribution
of the
twenty-one
copies of the
coTe"^''^"^ early editions which are known to survive is interesting.
Eighteen
are
now
in
Great Britain and
three are in
America.
The Bodleian Library
at
Oxford
has the
high
distinction of
Distribution
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