A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

Editor:		Farnsworth Wright.
Publisher:		The Popular Fiction Publishing Company, Chicago.
Series:		Wright's Shakespeare Library.
Date of publication:		1935.
Binding:		Stapled Softcover.
Number of pages:		97 pages.
Original price:		35 cent.

Front Cover

Frontispiece

The cover is paper and is slightly larger than the leaves of the book. Two staples through all but the cover pages.

'A Midsummer Night's Dream' contains 25 black and white interior illustrations by Virgil Finlay.

• Front cover: William Shakespeare .
• Frontipiece: William Shakespeare and characters. ". . . the poet's pen turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name."
• Illustrations for Act I, Scene I:
  • EGEUS: "Full of vexation come I, with complaint against my child, my daughter Hermia."
  • EGEUS: "Thou hast, by moonlight, at her window sung."
  • HERMIA: ". . . that fire which burn'd the Carthage queen, when the false Troyan under sail was seen."
• Illustration for Act I, Scene II:
  • QUINCE: "Is all our company her?"
• Illustrations for Act II, Scene I:
  • FAIRY: "Farewell, thou lob of spirits."
  • PUCK: "The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale, sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me."
  • OBERON: "Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania."
  • OBERON: "The juice of it, on sleeping eyelids laid, will make or man or woman madly dote upon the next live creature that it sees."
  • OBERON: "Thou shalt know the man by the Athenian garments he has on."
• Illustration for Act II, Scene II:
  • HERMIA: "Lie further off, yet; do not lie so near."
• Illustrations for Act III, Scene I:
  • QUINCE: "O monstrous! O strange! We are haunted!" Act III, Scene I.
  • TITANIA: "Be kind and courteous to this gentle man."
• Illustrations for Act III, Scene II:
  • PUCK: "My mistress with a monster is in love."
  • PUCK: "This is the woman, but not this the man."
  • HELENA: "O spite! O hell! I see you all are bent to set against me, for your merriment."
  • LYSANDER: "I will shake thee from me like a serpent."
  • PUCK: "Here, villain, drawn and ready. Where art thou?"
• Illustrations for Act IV, Scene I:
  • THESEUS: "I know you two are rival enemies; how comes this gentle concord in the world?"
  • BOTTOM: "I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was."
• Illustrations for Act V, Scene I:
  • PROLOG: "If we offend, it is with our good will."
  • PROLOG: "And as she fled, her mantle she did fall."
  • PROLOG: "Whereat with blade, with bloody blameful blade, he bravely broach'd his boiling bloody breast."
  • MOON: "This lantern doth the horned moon present."
  • OBERON: "To the best bride-bed will we, which by us shall blessed be."

All illustrations are reproduced in 'Finlay's Lost Drawings for Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream''.

On February 4, 1942, Lyn Johnson, Secretary to the Editor of Weird Tales, sent a letter to R.A. Hoffman in Los Angeles in response to some questions. R.A. Hoffman was well known in the science fiction and fantasy scene, and art editor for the fan magazine "The Acolyte". In that letter it is stated that "Concerning "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by Farnsworth Wright, we do not have any more copies but you might write to Mrs. Farnsworth Wright in our care an we will pass it along to her. She would be the only one who might enlighten you on this subject."

Letter by
Lyn Johnson

From this it can be concluded that the book was also distributed through Weird Thales.

References on this Site:

• Portraits of William Shakespeare.
• A Midsummer Night's Dream by Wm. Shakespeare: Studies for the Illustrations by Virgil Finlay'.
• Advertisements for "A Midsummer Night's Dream".
• On the 'Composition of Frontispiece'.

References on the Internet:

• Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia entry 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'.
• Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia entry 'The 1935 movie', the financial motivation for the release of the book in 1935.