We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected]
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
The New Bibliography represents one of the most important developments in the history of Shakespeare editing. Those associated with the movement – most especially W. W. Greg, R. B. McKerrow and A. W. Pollard – aimed to bring a scientific mindset to the business of examining, theorising about and editing early modern texts. Much of their early work provided significant breakthroughs in bibliographic knowledge. Their more speculative ideas – including the division of early single play texts into 'good' and 'bad' quartos; 'memorial reconstruction'; proposed differences between foul paper manuscripts and prompt books – have proved controversial in the long run, but have nevertheless, for the past century, served as the bedrock for techniques for editing early modern texts. The history of these ideas is mapped out here. The chapter concludes with an extended consideration of two projects spawned by the New Bibliography: the Oxford Shakespeare, which ultimately ran into the sand, despite repeated efforts to revive it, and the New Cambridge Shakespeare, which was brought successfully to completion by John Dover Wilson.