SPECIMENS OF ENGLISH DRAMATIC POETS, WHO LIVED ABOUT THE TIME OF SHAKESPEARE : WITH NOTES.

London : for Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme, 1808. First edition. Lamb's hugely influential rediscovery of the Elizabethans and Jacobeans, many of the specimens of their work culled from "plays which are to be found only in the British Museum and in some scarce private libraries" - Francis Beaumont, George Chapman, Thomas Decker, John Fletcher, John Ford, Fulke Greville, Ben Jonson, Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, John Marston, Philip Massinger, Thomas Middleton, George Peele, Cyril Tourneur, John Webster, and many more - "the most striking anthology perhaps ever made from English literature" (Edmund Blunden). Crown 8vo (185 x 113mm). xii,484pp. Bound, without half-title, in a very handsome later (early twentieth-century) full blue crushed morocco, banded and richly gilt, by Robert Riviere & Son; all edges gilt; inner gilt dentelles; marbled endleaves; some very minor rubbing and a hint of bruising, but a very good copy.