Chapter 3 - The Tonson Era 1

Summary

Notes that, by the beginning of the eighteenth century, the bulk of the rights to Shakespeare had been consolidated into the hands of the Tonson publishing firm. The Tonsons – oftentimes in concert with a cartel of other London publishers – served as the primary publishers of Shakespeare for the greater part of the eighteenth century. The chapter registers a number of innovations introduced by the Tonson group: the recruitment of well-known writers to serve as editors and the prominent advertising of this fact on edition title pages; the publication of the first illustrated edition of Shakespeare; experimentation with different multivolume formats, breaking with the tradition of single-volume folio publication. The textual strategies of the different editors employed by the Tonsons are explored, with the 'aesthetic' approach of an editor such as Alexander Pope being contrasted with the more scholarly approach of Lewis Theobald. The appearance of the first extended sketch of Shakespeare's life in Nicholas Rowe's edition is also noted.