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| Draft cover of James A. Warren's new, centenary edition of J. Thomas Looney's "Shakespeare" Identified. The book cover is modeled after the dust jacket of the 1920 Cecil Palmer edition. |
by Linda Theil
James A. Warren, author of An Index to Oxfordian Publications (Forever Press, fourth edition 2017), announced last week that he will publish a new, centenary edition of "Shakespeare" Identified by J. Thomas Looney with Bill Boyle's Forever Press.
Warren said the new edition features clean, clear text that is beautifully formatted and extensively footnoted. Warren has purchased the rights to use five images from the National Portrait Gallery, and hopes to publish the new edition within the next month.
He will price the edition to sell for less than current, on-demand, editions that are simply bound photocopies of the out-of-print original book. Profits from the sale of Warren's new centennial edition will go toward the support of the Shakespeare Online Authorship Resources (SOAR) site at Bill Boyles' New England Shakespeare Oxford Library (NESOL).
Warren is also working on a new edition of Looney's other Oxfordian work, The Poems of Edward de Vere; as well as a new book chronicling the impact of Looney's work in the one-hundred years since the publication of "Shakespeare" Identified to celebrate the centennial.
Warren said,
With the edition of the poems to come out later, the centenary edition of "Shakespeare" Identified to come out soon, and the collection of all 28 of Looney's known articles and letters for publication included as appendices to the one-hundredth-anniversary book, all of Looney's Oxfordian writings will be readily available by the time of the centenary of his book on March 4, 2020.
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| James A.Warren, editor of "Shakespeare" Identified, Centenary Edition |
From the cover of
"Shakespeare" Identified
Centenary Edition, edited by
James A. Warren
James A. Warren
In 1920 J. Thomas Looney's "Shakespeare" Identified introduced the idea that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, was the man behind the pseudonym "William Shakespeare." This Centenary Edition -- with the first new layout since the 1920 U.S. edition -- is designed to enhance readers' enjoyment as they make their way through Looney's fascinating account of how he, shining light from a new perspective on facts already known to Shakespeare scholars of his day, uncovered the true story of who "Shakespeare" really was and how he came to write his works.
Even as the centenary of its publication approaches, "Shakespeare" Identified remains the most revolutionary book on Shakespeare ever written. Since its appearance several generations of scholars have deepened and extended Looney's original findings, further substantiating his claim that Edward de Vere was indeed the author of the dramatic and poetic works widely regarded as the greatest in the English language.
Perhaps most importantly for scholars, this edition of Looney's classic text identifies the sources of more than 230 passages he quoted from other works, providing readers for the first time with accurate information on the books and papers he consulted in his research. A Bibliography at the end of the book supplements those notes for easy reference to Looney's sources.
So if you're new to the Shakespeare authorship question, or even if you've read widely on the subject, get set to enjoy the book that novelist John Galsworthy called the best detective story he had ever read.
Jame's Warren's new edition of Shakespeare Identified was published on September 20, 2018 and is available on Amazon at
https://www.amazon.com/Shakespeare-Identified-Edward-Seventeenth-Oxford/dp/0998928933.