A Notebook Containing Information about Early Editions of Shakespeare, Collected from Various Sources

This volume was once amongst the rare Shakespeareana belonging to James Halliwell, whose work as an editor is seen elsewhere in this display, but was sold in 1856 at one of the periodic sales that Halliwell was forced to organise to remedy his constant financial instability. It contains several pages of notes on specific copies of early editions of Shakespeare in the hand of John Payne Collier (1789-1833). Collier, born into comparative poverty, had undertaken his own education and established himself as a respected Shakespearean scholar. However, his claims to have discovered contemporary annotations correcting the text in a copy of the second Folio of 1632 had raised accusations of forgery, though it did not prevent him from incorporating them into his own edition of Shakespeare. While Collier never admitted wrongdoing, by 1860 it was all but universally accepted that he was responsible for numerous falsified documents. Any sound editorial work he had undertaken was wholly discredited, leaving this a memento of infamy rather than a relic of a true scholar.