Johnson publishes his revolutionary edition of Shakespeare in Eight Volumes

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.

23 March 1844 letter from John Kenyon to Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Call Number: 1844-03-23 John Kenyon to EBB, Location: Armstrong Browning Library - The Browning Letters

This letter from John Kenyon to Elizabeth Barrett Browning shows her close relationship with her cousin, who was also a poet and introduced EBB to many other famous writers. Kenyon’s remarks on A Drama of Exile show his support of her literary endeavors. He is believed to have encouraged EBB to publish A Drama when she had almost abandoned it. In the context of this letter, EBB has already sent A Drama to her American and London publishers and Kenyon offers his advice on her preface: “[L]et me suggest about your preface—that the part of your preface which is to relate to heading Miltonic ground &c—and which you will do as well as you can, that is, better than any one else could do it, may well be the same in the English and American Editions.” His enthusiasm for her work is seen here and later in the letter when he writes, “’Drama of Exile’ sounds like serious work– It is vague enough to excite curiosity—it is particular enough to apply to the subject in hand.” Such enthusiasm prefigures her subsequent favorable reviews in the same year for the 1844 Poems that contained A Drama.

Transcription of the letter link

Robert Browning accepts an invitation from Henry Morley

Front cover of Henry Morley's 1883 edition of The Spectator

Armstrong Browning Library Digital Collections ID: ab-letters-ltr_80149-00

Henry Morley (1822-1894) was a man of many talents: a physician, a scholar and educator, a columnist, and the editor of multi-volume collections of both English and world literature. He rubbed shoulders with the leading literary figures of his day—Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, the Brownings—and the Dictionary of National Biography eulogized him for his work “as a populariser of literature.” 

In 1883, Morley edited a three-volume edition of The Spectator. The Spectator was a favorite of John Steinbeck, who grew up reading his grandfather’s copy of the Morley 1883 edition and took it with him on his Travels with Charley.

References

Banerjee, Jacqueline. “Henry Morley (1822-1894).” The Victorian Web.

Hunter, Fred. "Morley, Henry (1822-1894)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.