Writing critically about Victorian editions of Shakespeare is beset by all kinds of problems, which run directly counter to the assumption that, because they are relatively recent, information about them should be easy to acquire. The greatest is the task of establishing what in earlier circumstances would be termed a copy-text. From the 1840s, with the new methods of production listed in Chapter 1, and networks of distribution facilitated by railways and improved communication with the empire and North America, publication grew exponentially in the effort to satisfy a rapidly growing and increasingly diverse reading public. The result was that many texts were produced in a bewildering variety of forms. Following the example of the Victorian novel, most Shakespeare editions appeared initially as serial paper-bound parts, which were then issued in three or more volumes, often with a range of different bindings and sometimes in various physical formats. Introductory material was sometimes reissued separately, and the text often presented again in a large-paper edition, or with additional illustrations, before eventually being offered as a cheap single volume text. Many were also published in the United States in slightly altered formats. Perhaps in an effort to keep many versions available simultaneously, little attention was given to recording the date of publication, so that establishing which edition is being referred to in subsequent discussions, or even library catalogues, is far from simple. That many publishers’ records were either lost in the London blitz, or mislaid or deliberately ‘weeded’ through the mergers and acquisitions of the 1970s and 80s, does not make the task any more straightforward.