The Staunton First Folio Facsimile. Quarto. Publisher's original full calf binding, elaborately decorated in gilt and blind. Marbled endpapers. Silk ribbon page marker. A very good copy, with some wear to the boards and repairs to the front joint and head of spine. Ownership inscription to the title page.

The famous Staunton facsimile of the First Folio was first issued in sixteen monthly parts, beginning on the tercentenary of the playwright's birth, before Day & Son bound them up in a single volume in 1866. While the tercentenary prompted many publishers to issue facsimiles around the celebration, Staunton's pioneering of photo-lithographic reproduction led a contemporary reviewer for The Bookseller to praise it as a "miracle of accuracy".
The first person to make a photo-lithographed facsimile of an early printed book, Staunton had previously used the same method to produce an edition of the Sonnets in 1862 and one of the 1600 Quarto of Much Ado About Nothing in 1864. The process for the First Folio differed in that it is likely that he used three copies of the folio to make a complete reproduction:
"In April 1861 Howard Staunton wrote to the head of the Office [of the Ordnance Survey] to propose reproducing the First Folio and by November of that year 'a large part of the book [886 negatives] had been copied by this means' from the Dryden volume [West 145]. In 1866, Staunton produced his complete facsimile edition of the Folio... its title page says it was based on West 13 (British Library) and West 56 [then Bridgewater House] (now at the Huntington), making no mention of the Dryden copy". A letter written by Sidney Lee by A. E. Dryden in 1900 relates that Staunton used all three copies mentioned, "the 3rd copy belonging to my family... which was lent by my late brother Sir Hy. Dryden for the purpose - and of this reproduction some copies were given him, of which I have one here". (Anthony James West, The Shakespeare First Folio)

Stock ID: 37876