'Shakspeare' 1892 Volume, Sharing and History Tracing Questions!

Good evening all! Just wanted to share my newest addition to my small antique book collection, The Works of William Shakspeare with Photographs, 1892.

More questions make themselves known the more I look into this book. Apparently there are 2 versions of this made in the 1890s, the 'Universal', and the 'Albion'. This is niether, instead its part of the 'Imperial Poets' series. There is nothing further I could find on this, nor could I locate an identical copy, few are green and none have this front design.





This is gold leaf isn't it?




I'm also trying to get to the bottom of its story. I thought originally the mostly gone sticker saying 'librarie.....-onti, Paris' pointed to the Bibliotheque Mazarine, located on the Quai de Conti, Paris. However, librarie means book store in French, not library. Then I turned to the small sticker on the cover of the book, but there is no mention of that store in any location ending with 'onti', and the address listed only turns up that same sticker on a different book that's been cataloged. I can find no real mention or history of the store at all. My thought is that the Mazarine had at one point a bookstore to recycle books and this was one of them. I don't know at what point those stickers would have been placed, but the librarie one does look rather old. Is there somewhere I can look thats not a google search to find out more?



Thank you!

 

There might have been more than one bookstore on the Quai de Conti, and the torn label also may refer to one that no longer exists. For example, I found this link referring to a bookstore that might still be in existence there. https://www.librarything.com/venue/70619/Librairie-Pascal-Corseaux

Since the book is used, it may have been sold multiple times by multiple bookstores. The other label seems to be from a different place. Since you are finding little on them, it may be that that store no longer exists.

The publisher F. Warne & Co. is British, and so your book probably began its life in England. Publishers in that era often issued printings with different covers and colors of covers, making it all very fun to understand and analyze.

This information from a copy digitized in Google Books includes the "imperial poets" phrase in the bibliographic description:
Bibliographic information

Title The Works of William Shakespeare: With Life, Glossary, Etc. : Prepared from the Texts of the First Folio, the Quartos, and Compared with Recent Commentators
The "imperial" poets
Author William Shakespeare
Publisher F. Warne, 1891
Original from Harvard University
Digitized Nov 15, 2007
Length 1136 pages
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Works_of_William_Shakespeare.html?id=jmgRAAAAYAAJ

I used to collect some old, inexpensive Shakespeare editions. Yours looks interesting to me because of the mention of photographs. Does it include any photographs of actors of the time wearing Shakespearean costumes?

 

Oh goodness what a wealth of information thank you! Yes I suppose just because it once existed doesn't mean there will be an extensive history on it now. Shame! Unfortunately, there are no photographs of actors, just landmarks such as Shakespeare's birthplace and the Roman Forum.