The Dramatic Works of William Shakspeare

New edition, augmented with an introductory study and notes. Engraved portrait of William Shakespeare as frontispiece.

Green calf binding, gilt and blind-tooled border on the covers, spine with five raised bands, gilt ornaments on the bands, gilt caissons and fleurons between the bands, gilt edges, blind-tooled decorative border on the doublures, French Curl paper doublures, French Curl edges. Binding rubbed and scuffed, some surface wear, the spine and part of the rear board sunned.

Manuscript ex-libris of the celebrated medium Julie de Güldenstubbe on a front free endpaper.

Despite the gradual adoption of the spelling «Shakespeare», which became standard especially after the publication of the Cambridge and Globe editions in the 1860s, the spelling «Shakspeare», which appeared at the end of the eighteenth century, remained current well into the nineteenth century, as this edition from the Scottish publishing house Griffin and Company attests. The work is arranged in three sections – tragedies, comedies, and history plays – each accompanied by a commentary, with the text set in two columns.

The Shakespearean universe, populated by ghosts and pervaded by magic, finds an echo in the spiritist imagination of the nineteenth century. The ghost of the dead king who opens Hamlet and commands his son to avenge him, that of Banquo appearing at the banquet in Macbeth, or the shade of Caesar come to haunt Brutus before the battle of Philippi - these spectral figures would hardly have escaped the attention of Baroness de Güldenstubbe.

This volume comes from the library of Baroness Julie de Güldenstubbe (1827-1888), a passionate bibliophile of the occult sciences and a medium. The baroness's name became closely associated with a widely publicized mystical affair, when she testified to a supernatural phenomenon she claimed to have witnessed in her youth. While studying at a boarding school for young ladies in Livonia (present-day Latvia), she and her fellow pupils reportedly saw their French teacher, Émilie Sagée, split into two, in the manner of a doppelgänger. From time to time, the girls would see two identical teachers giving the lesson at the blackboard, but the strangest episode occurred when the school's forty-two pupils were in the classroom with another teacher. Through the windows, they caught sight of Émilie Sagée picking flowers in the garden; while the teacher giving the lesson had stepped out, Émilie's double entered the room and sat down in the armchair. Meanwhile, the real Émilie continued picking flowers outside. Two of the bolder girls then approached the double and tried to touch it: the woman's skin felt strangely soft to them, like a muslin fabric. Eighteen months after the strange teacher's arrival, only twelve of the forty-two pupils remained at the school, the others having been withdrawn by their worried parents. Émilie Sagée was then forced to leave the institution; Julie de Güldenstubbe, who was at her side when she learned of her dismissal, heard her confide that this was the nineteenth time this had happened to her.

Drawn to spiritism, the Baroness de Güldenstubbe subsequently carried on an extensive activity as a medium during the 1860s; her library of rare books likewise earned her a reputation as a bibliophile. Her prestigious collection, offered for sale by the Basel bookseller Adolphe Geering in 1890, attracted other bibliophiles from the Parisian spiritist and occultist milieu, among them Stanislas de Guaïta, who made purchases from it.

A collection of classic English theatre, from the library of a prominent figure in the Parisian spiritist circles of the Second Empire.