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 editor on the title-page, which embodied some notes on the comedies contributed by him to an American edition in 1850. In 1852 he printed a catalogue of his Shakespearean collections, and in 1853 issued the first volume of his magnificently printed folio edition of Shakespeare, with notes, drawings, and complete critical apparatus, aiming, as he said, at ‘a greater elaboration of Shakespearean criticism than has yet been attempted.’ The edition was limited to 150 copies. F. W. Fairholt prepared the wood-engravings. The sixteenth and last volume appeared in 1865. The original price was 63l. with the plates on plain paper, and 84l. with plates on India paper. The edition is probably the richest storehouse extant of Shakespearean criticism. Another expensive enterprise was the private issue between 1862 and 1871 of lithographed facsimiles, by Mr. E. W. Ashbee, of the Shakespearean quartos in forty-eight volumes. The price of each volume was five guineas, and although fifty copies of the series were prepared, the editor destroyed nineteen, so that thirty-one alone survived. A fire in 1874 at the Pantechnicon in Motcomb Street, Belgrave Square, the warehouse in London where unsold copies were stored, further reduced the number of sets, and Halliwell, writing on 13 Feb. 1874, was of opinion that only fifteen complete sets were then in existence. Other valuable works produced by Halliwell about the same time were his new edition of Nares's ‘Glossary,’ with the aid of Thomas Wright (1859), and his ‘Dictionary of Old English Plays’ based on Baker's ‘Biographia Dramatica’ in 1860.

Halliwell's income was still small, and he was involved in lawsuits which caused him repeated pecuniary losses. But he was able to remove about 1852 to Brixton Hill, and subsequently to West Brompton. An insatiable collector of rare books and manuscripts to the end of his life, the work of collecting grew more expensive every year. In youth he found rare volumes ‘plenty as blackberries’ on the outside stalls of old bookshops, procurable for a few pence or shillings; but competition drove the prices up, and it was with increasing difficulty that he was able to satisfy his special affection for the early editions of Shakespeare's works. He often found it necessary to sell his collections by auction, and to begin his task of collecting anew. Every year between 1856 and 1859 Messrs. Sotheby sold for him many rare volumes which he had used in editing his folio Shakespeare, and which included some of the least accessible of the quartos. In 1857 the sale lasted three days, and very high prices were realised. In 1858 the British Museum purchased his mortgage deed of a house in Blackfriars (11 March 1612–13), which contains one of the few genuine signatures of Shakespeare. In 1867 the death of his father-in-law placed his wife, under her grandfather's will, in possession of the Worcestershire estates, in which Sir Thomas Phillipps had only a life-interest, and he was thenceforth able to indulge his passion as a collector with less difficulty.

In 1862 Halliwell, who had long paid annual visits for purposes of research to Stratford, arranged without fee the majority of the records preserved there. In 1863 he published privately, and at his own expense, a full descriptive calendar of the archives, which he had put in order. In 1864 he issued an exhaustive history from legal documents of New Place, Shakespeare's last residence at Stratford, and ‘Stratford-on-Avon in the times of the Shakespeares, illustrated by extracts from the council-books,’ &c., with engraved facsimiles of the original entries. Very limited imprints followed of the chamberlain's accounts (1585–1616), of the vestry books, of the council books, and of the archives of the court of record at Stratford in Shakespeare's time.

In 1863 Halliwell initiated at Stratford the movement for purchasing the house and cottages then standing on the sites of Shakespeare's residence, New Place, and of the garden originally attached to it, with a view to making them over to the Stratford corporation. For this purpose he raised 5,000l., contributing largely himself, and paying all the expenses connected with the movement out of his own purse. The house is now a Shakespearean museum, and the ground around it has been cleared, so as to form a public garden. In 1863–4 he and William Hepworth Dixon acted as joint-secretaries of the committee formed to celebrate at Stratford the tercentenary of Shakespeare's birth.

In 1870 Halliwell abandoned the critical study of the text of Shakespeare, and henceforth devoted himself exclusively to elucidating Shakespeare's life. In 1874 appeared a first part of his ‘Illustrations of the Life,’ which included a number of documents and discursive, although exhaustive, notes on various topics. This work remained a fragment, but he pursued his investigations, and examined in the next five years the archives of thirty-two towns besides Stratford, in the hope of discovering new information respecting Shakespeare's life. In 1881 he ‘printed for the author's friends’ the first version of his ‘Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare,’ an octavo volume of 192 pages. A second edition, issued for general circulation in 1882,