William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, Deluxe Edition [Unabridged] [Leather Bound]

William Shakespeare (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 8, 1990

This complete and unabridged edition contains every word that Shakespeare wrote — all 37 tragedies, comedies, and histories, plus the sonnets. You’ll find such classics as The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing and The Taming of the Shrew. This Library of Literary Classics edition is bound in padded leather with luxurious gold-stamping on the front and spine, satin ribbon marker and gilded edges. Other titles in this series include: Charlotte & Emily Bronte: The Complete Novels; Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Works; Mark Twain: Selected Works; Charles Dickens: Four Complete Novels; Lewis Carroll: The Complete, Fully Illustrated Works; and Jane Austen: The Complete Novels.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

This complete and unabridged edition contains every word that Shakespeare wrote — all 37 tragedies, comedies, and histories, plus the sonnets. You'll find such classics as The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing and The Taming of the Shrew. This Library of Literary Classics edition is bound in padded leather with luxurious gold-stamping on the front and spine, satin ribbon marker and gilded edges. Other titles in this series include: Charlotte & Emily Bronte: The Complete Novels; Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Works; Mark Twain: Selected Works; Charles Dickens: Four Complete Novels; Lewis Carroll: The Complete, Fully Illustrated Works; and Jane Austen: The Complete Novels.

Product Details

• Leather Bound: 1229 pages
• Publisher: Gramercy; Unabridged edition (September 8, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517053616
• ISBN-13: 978-0517053614
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 2.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (75 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #588,916 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

424 of 457 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Only suitable for a book shelf, October 18, 2002

By 

richardpinneau.com (Colorado) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, Deluxe Edition (Leather Bound)

If you got a copy of Shakespeare's works, you might like to be able to rely on the text it presents. That would require knowing the credentials of the editor, the currency of the editing, etc...The price is excellent - what the reader receives, well... caveat emptor.

Value to beginners: none (no background on the plays, glosses of difficult words, etc.)
Value to adv. students: none .
Value to scholars: less than none.
Judge this book by its cover: not. Attractive cover hides printed pages that appear to be facsimiles of archaic, crammed-type pages from some bygone era.

Perhaps you think, 'Well, at least it's a cheap way to get a copy of the complete plays.' A few months of reading modern, respectable editions (e.g., from Routledge/Arden, Cambridge, or Oxford) for any popular Shakespeare play will help a newcomer realize that for almost all Shakespeare plays determining what is 'the text' is a vast conundrum; nay: an oxymoron. As with many aspects of Shakespeare study, 'tis not so easy: for most plays there are multiple alternative *original sources* - differing in important ways from each other. What sources did the editor of the Gramercy edition use? Well, if the publisher does not deem it necessary even to credit the editor's name in this volume or to acknowledge how outdated the editorial work is...

A better use of your money is to buy a modern edition of single plays. Even the inexpensive Folger Library paperbacks give beginners helpful definitions for difficult words. For those planning to dive deeply into the intricate weavings and unfathomed levels of meaning in these great works, save your money by shunning this bookcase-worthy-only printing, and seek out a complete edition such as the Arden(Routledge) with helpful annotation on difficult words or the respected Riverside edition, or (best for real literature students) David Bevington's excellently edited volume (extremely helpful overviews offered for each play). (A used copy of a Bevington edition from the 1980s is worth a truckload of these 1900ish Gramercy printings.)

I regret spending even these few minutes to review the most INadequate version of Shakespeare available, but am aggravated to it by the high Amazon sales ranking for this edition - which suggests that thousands of unsuspecting buyers are throwing money away. Worse yet, once they have their copies they will be discouraged from exploring the grandeur of the plays because of this archaic, alienating, barren reprint. Most will open the book a few times, quickly put it away, and stick to Hollywood productions.

Ignore the respected name 'Random House' on these books and attend to the qualifier 'Value Publication' and its alias 'Gramercy Books'. We are not amused. The buyer is abused.

53 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A useful edition, February 2, 2006

By 

Hans U. Widmaier "Uli" (Elmhurst, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, Deluxe Edition (Leather Bound)

Many reviews below fault this edition for its complete lack of footnotes, indications of what text was used, or any other background material of any kind. They have a point, but I still disagree with their criticism. The edition's lack of these materials does not render it useless. On the contrary. I own several Shakespeare editions (among them Bevington, Riverside, and most of the Ardens), and I have used them to study the works in depth. For me, this edition fills a real need: direct, unmediated access to the text analogous to hearing it read out loud. Having the Bard's complete output in one physically manageable volume (the Riverside is much too big - try putting it in your briefcase to read on the train!) unencumbered by any extraneous writing such as footnotes allows me to focus completely on the text and avoid getting distracted by the footnotes. Reading Shakespeare from this book has really changed my perspective on many of the plays because I can enjoy the uninterrupted flow of the narrative, similar to a reading out loud. One might object that I could simply skip the footnotes of the other editions. But it's not that simple. By their very presence, footnotes have, in my view at least, something disempowering. It's not me encountering the text; rather, it's me respectfully approaching something of which I'm not quite worthy. That's a fine attitude, and I'm all for it when you get to know the plays. But having dug through them, I find it a wonderful experience to encounter the "pure" text (I know that's ultimately an illusion) and enjoy it without someone trying to teach at the same time. If there's a textual crux or a term I can't understand or some historical background I want to brush up on, I can always look it up in one of my annotated editions. This edition, by its very simplicity, has really rekindled my enthusiasm for Shakespeare. Last but not least, having all of Shakespeare's texts in one small volume allows me to flip quickly to another play to look something up or spot cross-connections. That can be very interesting. In short, this admittedly simple and perhaps not completely reliable edition has truly enriched my reading of Shakespeare.

51 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The work is unquestioned; the edition, questionable., April 14, 2003

By 

Bill R. Moore (New York, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, Deluxe Edition (Leather Bound)

The very idea of reviewing or giving stars to Shakespeare in this format is superfluous: he is the epitome of English literature. The source and inspiration for many subsequent classics, the well from which many popular expressions have sprung, the basis for many brilliant (and not-so-brilliant) stage and film renditions of these classics -- Shakespeare's literary greatness lies universally ackwnoledged and unquestioned. In reviewing any edition of the man's works, then, the reviewer's task is not to comment upon the work itself, but the presentation. This Gramercy edition of The Complete Works (yes, that's all 37 plays -- comedies, histories, and tragedies -- as well as all of the poems, sonnets included) is the most popular and widely-available -- and inexpensive -- version available. Is it the best? Well, no. Other reviews of this edition have commented upon its shortcomings -- extremely small print; very tight and hard-to-read layout; no margins for notes; no footnotes or annotations; no background information on the plays; errors, typos, and generally questionable editing. That said, this edition may have what you're looking for. It does indeed contain the complete works; it also has a few other small incentives: a hard cover that looks great on a bookshelf, a built-in bookmarker, and various illustrations. Clearly, this is not an omnibus for the Shakespeare scholar. If you want an edition of the bard for in-depth study or for academic use, you are better off buying more expansive editions of the individual plays themselves, with plenty of background info, notes, annotations, and space for your own writing; or else one of the more expensive editions of the Complete Works. That said, if you are just looking for a Shakespeare book that has all of his works in one place, that is convenient and, above all, inexpensive -- or you just want a Shakespeare tome sitting on your dust-ridden bookshelf to impress friends -- then you could do worse than picking up this.