9 volumes, large folio (419 x 311 mm). Half-titles, 91 (of 96) full-page cooper-plate engravings after paintings by Fuseli, Reynolds, Smirke, Northcote, Porter, Stothard, Hamilton, Bunbury, Opie, and Westall. (Offsetting to text from plates, some spotting to plates and text throughout, few leaves browned, tear along hinge of p. 52, Romeo and Juliet, with some archival repair.) Contemporary red straight-grain morocco, covers with three elaborate gilt-tooled borders, spines in 6 compartments with gilt frames, black morocco lettering-pieces gilt in 2, edges gilt (few minor scuffs and small stains to covers, light rubbing at extreme edges). Provenance: Troy Public Library (bookplates, small rubberstamps).

The original paintings, the source for the "sumptuous plates, the production of which swallowed up a fortune," filled the Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall (Jaggard). According to the prospectus, issued in 1798, a printing house, type foundry, and ink factory were all opened for the production of Boydell's edition with plates by the leading English artists of the day. "There can be no doubt that Boydell's Shakespeare... was the most splendid of bibliophile editions undertaken in the 18th-century or at any other time... no Printing Press, which has hitherto existed, ever produced a work in nine large volumes in folio so uniformly beautiful" (Franklin, Shakespeare Domesticated: The 18th-Century Editions, pp. 47-8). First issued in 18 parts with the first part appearing in 1791. Each volume was issued with the 1802 general title-page, but this set also contains a 1791 general title-page in volume I suggesting that the present set is bound from the original parts. Jaggard 506, 508; Lowndes VI, 2263.