Bound in real cloth, top edge gilt, head and tailbands, ribbon marker, embossed jacket, black & white frontispiece, three-column setting for ease of reading. It is illustrated throughout with 500 of Sir John Gilbert's superb woodcuts engraved by Thomas Dalziel and Edward Dalziel. With his prolific historical paintings, John Gilbert was often referred to as "The Scott of Painting," although he was equally active as a book illustrator, producing cuts for editions of Shakespeare, Cervantes, Sir Walter Scott, and other writers venerated during the Victorian era, as well as such contemporary and popular writers as Dickens. It is in virtue of his achievements in black and white that he takes his place among the few masters, not of his age and country only, but of all time. The Magazine of Art This newly re-set edition of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, contains all the plays and poems; the plays are arranged in the chronological order of their composition, not gathered into comedies, histories and tragedies - the traditional method dating from the first folio, and contains synopses of each play and poem. The text is taken from the Shakespeare Head Press, The Stratford Town Shakespeare edited by Arthur Henry Bullen, and this new edition contains John Aubrey's Brief Life of Shakespeare, a bibliography, biography of Sir John Gilbert, an account of The Shakespeare Head Press edition and listing of Shakespeare's major characters.