The twenty-one-volume Shakespeare published in 1813 and housed at the Armstrong Browning Library began with the work of Samuel Johnson. In 1765, he became the first scholar to publish a collection of Shakespeare's plays with extensive notes. Eight years later, George Steevens, whose editing had impressed Johnson, published a more thorughly notated edition in ten volumes. Steevens' friend, Isaac Reed, continued to revise and republish subsequent editions until, in 1803, he produced a twenty-one volume edition, with additional notes by Steevens and other commentators. It was this edition that, ten years later, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's father gifted to Arabella Graham-Clarke.

The photographed page from Measure For Measure is typical of nearly every page in the collection: more space is given to notes than to the text of the play. A surprising amount of notes concern textual variants and editorial decisions. Many of the most helpful notes recall lines from other plays that illuminate the meaning of a word or phrase in the present text.