THE COLLECTED WORKS & THOMAS MIDDLETON AND EARLY MODERN TEXTUAL CULTURE: A COMPANION TO THE COLLECTED WORKS. Two Volumes.

First editions, first printings. Two Volumes. Original black cloth lettered in gilt to the spines. In the dustwrappers, each reproducing a painting by Frans Hals. A near fine set, the bindings square and firm, the cloth and gilt sharp, the contents clean throughout. A little shelf dust to lower page block edges, light surface scratch to the front board of the Companion volume. In the near fine dustwrappers, each showing some very light shelfwear, but remaining generally bright and sharp. Altogether a lovely first edition set of both volumes of this monumental edition.

The Oxford Thomas Middleton, produced over two decades by a team of over sixty scholars under the general editorship of Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino, brings together for the first time in a single volume all sixty surviving texts currently attributed to one of the greatest figures of English Renaissance literature. The last collected Middleton appeared as far back as 1886, but this new edition is first to be based on a full examination of all existing manuscript material as well as early printed editions. Arranged chronologically, and including a section of Juvenilia, the volume contains an exhaustive array of editorial material (including introductory essays to each work) as well as illustrations. The companion volume, 'Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture', published separately but simultaneously with the 'Collected Works', is more than a mere appendage to that volume. Once again executed by a huge list of scholars, it is a detailed companion to early modern European book history, situating Middleton in the wider context of early modern textual production, reproduction, circulation, and reception. Divided into three parts, the first, 'The Culture' surveys the written characters and the real figures connected to Middleton "using the complex relationship between textual and social orders to trace the evolution of textual culture in England during the 'Middleton century' (1580–1679)". Part II, 'The Author' "includes detailed evidence for the canon and chronology of Middleton's works in all genres [...], situat[ing] individual authorial agency in the space between larger institutional forces and the material specificity of particular textual embodiments". Part III, 'The Texts', contains a full editorial apparatus for each item in 'The Collected Works', with cross-references provided to make it easy to move between the two volumes.