Samuel Weller Singer

The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare - Volume IV is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1875. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future.

The literary scholar Samuel Weller Singer (1783–1858) was largely self-taught, but his enthusiasm for reading caused him to open a bookshop, and he developed a wide circle of bibliomaniac friends, including Francis Douce (who later left him enough money to retire from writing for a living). He was an editor of many early modern poets, and his editions of John Selden's Table-Talk and Joseph Spence's Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters, of Books and Men are also reissued in this series. This highly illustrated 1816 work, originally published in a run of only 250 copies, was praised for its quality by Thomas Frognall Dibdin. In it, Singer argues that the increasing sophistication sought by the buyers of playing cards led to increasing improvements in the art of wood engraving, and that the study of these humble and rarely surviving artefacts can give insights into the achievements of the greatest Renaissance carvers.