[Two printed works bound together.] Hamilton's 'An Inquiry into the Genuineness of the Manuscript Corrections in Mr. J. Payne Collier's Annotated Shakspere' and 'Mr. J. Payne Collier's reply to Mr. N. E. S. Hamilton's "Inquiry"'.

Both works first editions, and both in good condition, on aged paper. Bound together in late nineteenth-century red cloth half-binding, with marbled boards. Title on spine: 'COLLIER CONTROVERSY | H.R.H. | 1919'. Hamilton title in full: 'An Inquiry into the Genuineness of the Manuscript Corrections in Mr. J. Payne Collier's Annotated Shakspere, Folio, 1632; and of certain Shaksperian Documents likewise published by Mr. Collier'. [4] + 155pp., 4to. With frontispiece and two plates, one of them double-page. Collier title in full: 'Mr. J. Payne Collier's reply to Mr. N. E. S. Hamilton's "Inquiry" into the imputed Shakespeare Forgeries'. [1] + 72pp., 8vo. 4-page publishers catalogue bound in at end. Both works are now scarce. Arthur and Janet Ing Freeman, in their magisterial 'John Payne Collier: Scholarship and Forgery in the Nineteenth Century' (Yale, 2004) state that, together with Ingleby, Hamilton 'remains the most persistent and effective contemporary discreditor of Perkins and Collier, and a bit of a mystery'.