The first complete edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets to appear after the original 1609 quarto edition. Shakespeare’s sonnets were first published in 1609—an edition that is effectively unobtainable, with no copies recorded at auction. The next edition was not until 1640; the 1640 edition, however, was substantially altered by John Benson who reorganized and edited the text, blithely changing genders and meaning, and padding the volume with poems by other writers. His work has been variously described as “garbled” and “sorry.” Jacob Tonson and Nicholas Rowe published their edition of the plays in 1709, but this did not include the non-dramatic poetry since Tonson did not own the copyrights. Edmund Curll, who was less discerning about things like copyright, published the poems on his own a few months later in September 1709 but used the poorly edited and incomplete Benson text. Just before, however, in August, Bernard Lintott had published the first volume of the present two-volume edition of the sonnets. In the article “Four Centuries of Shakespeare Publication,” Giles Dawson notes that the texts of the sonnets in the Lintott edition are vastly superior to Curll’s, as they are taken from the first edition of 1609. They “are all carefully printed, with a minimum of emendation,” and “the spelling and even the punctuation of the copy texts are reproduced with remarkable fidelity. […] Whatever motives—whatever conscious editorial principles—lay behind this edition, the texts have the poems to the public in a form little altered from the first editions” (pp.7-8). Lintott’s edition further reinstated eight sonnets omitted by Benson and collected for the first time the longer poems “The Rape of Lucrece” and “Venus and Adonis.” Despite the virtues of Lintott’s text, Curll’s version would nonetheless dominate until Edmond Malone’s 1780 edition restored the original. ESTC and Jaggard (p. 434) note that Volume 1 of the present edition is a [probably 1710] reissue of the [1709?] edition, with cancel title page and cancel divisional title pages, these bearing the imprint “printed in the year 1609.” More importantly, however, Volume 2 [probably 1711, according to Dawson] additionally includes the majority of the sonnets. Giles E. Dawson, “Four Centuries of Shakespeare Publication,” Lawrence, University of Kansas Libraries, 1964; ESTC T138086 (vol. 2); Jaggard, p. 434.
Christie’s