In November 1982, Sir William Empson signed a contract with Cambridge University Press agreeing to “write, or compile from his previous writing” two volumes of critical essays. The first was to concentrate on Shakespeare while the second would consist of articles on other Elizabethan and Jacobean writers.

Empson discussed his more detailed plans for each volume in letters to his publisher. The correspondence about the project began as early as August 1981 and carried on until a few months before Empson's death in April 1984. He wanted to have some wholly new pieces ready for inclusion in each of the two books. However, from the outset, he had planned that each volume would consist mainly of essays which had already appeared in journals. Some of these previously published but hitherto uncollected essays would simply be reprinted; but most would be substantially revised.

Empson had done an enormous amount of work towards both volumes; and the Shakespeare book, which he had aimed to finish first, was almost complete when he died. Lady Empson and Cambridge University Press have agreed that both volumes should be published; provided, of course, that they contain only those essays where Empson's surviving papers give decisive guidance as to which version he himself intended to publish.

Thanks to Lady Empson's great kindness in allowing me unrestricted access to the relevant manuscripts and typescripts, I have been able to establish reliable texts of all but one of the seven essays that Empson had planned to include in this first volume.