Histories and Tragedies from the Boydell Shakespeare Folio
HISTORIES AND TRAGEDIES FROM THE BOYDELL SHAKESPEARE FOLIO
presents twenty-five engravings, dating from 1791 to 1803, that
were adapted from paintings shown at the Shakespeare Gallery in
London in the late eighteenth century. John Boydell (1719 -
1804) was a noted engraver, publisher, print-seller, and even
Lord Mayor of London, who established the Shakespeare Gallery
and sold to subscribers engravings of the paintings shown there.
His nephew, Josiah Boydell, published the collected engravings
after John Boydell's death. The bound volume of Boydell's
Graphic illustrations of the dramatic works of Shakspeare
included in this exhibit was a gift in 1940 of Elisha Riggs,
Jr., whose father was the first great benefactor of Georgetown
University's Riggs Library, in 1890. The engravings in the
exhibition, which may once have been bound together in a similar
volume, came to the Library as a gift of James E. Sale in 1996.
The history of these Shakespearean eng