Horace Howard Furness launched and guided the New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare, considered by many critics to have been the single most important project in Shakespearean scholarship and criticism in America in the nineteenth century, and one which, in this century, is rivaled only by Charlton Hinman's 1968 facsimile reproduction of the First Folio. The New Variorum Edition brought to American scholarship international recognition and commendation. By 1869 Furness had completed plans for the edition, which was designed to bring together the results of critical and textual commentary spanning a range of 300 years. The New Variorum thus would make available in one edition the best interpretative comments on each play, including those originally printed in English and translations into English of what had appeared in other languages, most notably in German and French.

For the next forty-three years Furness devoted himself with unceasing energy to the monumental task of editing...