THE WORKS OF THOMAS NASHE: EDITED FROM THE ORIGINAL TEXTS Complete in Five Volumes.

Reprint. Bottle green cloth lettered and ruled in gilt to the spines. Issued without dustwrappers. A very near fine set, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. A sharp, crisp example of this uncommon set.

Ronald McKerrow's edition of Thomas Nashe's Works, still the standard critical edition of the author, first appeared in five volumes between 1904 and 1910 and is now widely recognised as having set a standard for English literary editing ever since (McKerrow is also the father of modern bibliography). Nashe (1567–c.1601), playwright, poet, satirist, among much else, was a famously colourful figure in Elizabethan London, seemingly involved with anything and everything controversial (his feud with Gabriel Harvey is legendary, and he was involved with a pirated edition Sidney's 'Astrophil and Stella'). His name appears on the title page of Marlowe's 'Dido, Queen of Carthage', and he may have had a hand in Shakespeare's 'Henry VI' plays. McKerrow's five volumes contain all Nashe's well-known works (including 'The Terrors of the Night', 'The Unfortunate Traveller', 'Pierce Penniless') along with all the pamphlets, introductions, and works of doubtful attribution. The first three volumes contain the texts, the remaining two the extensive notes, introductions, appendices, and an index. The set was first issued by A. H. Bullen (Vols. I-IV) and Sidgwick and Jackson (Vol. V) in an edition of just 750 copies. Basil Blackwell reprinted the set in 1958, with corrections and a supplement by F. P. Wilson (by which time the first editions were fetching a small fortune). This reprint of the 1958 edition, bound in green cloth by the Kemp Hall Bindery in Oxford, was issued without dustwrappers in 1966.