The great Shakespearean scholar Edmond Malone completed his ten-volume edition of the Bard’s works while living at 40 Langham Street in Soho.

SHAKESPEARE SCHOLARSHIP

Born in Ireland, Malone settled permanently in London on the publication of his new edition of the works of Oliver Goldsmith in 1777. Shortly afterwards, he became involved in the edition of the Johnson-Steevens Shakespeare (1778) and moved into 40 Langham Street, living there from 1779 until his death 33 years later.

Malone was among the first scholars to base his research on Shakespeare on original documents, and drew widely on his celebrated library of Elizabethan literature. While living at number 40 Malone researched his monumental ten-volume edition of the works of Shakespeare, published in 1790 to great acclaim.

LONDON LITERARY SOCIETY

Malone provided invaluable assistance to James Boswell with his Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson (1785) and Life of Johnson (1791). Malone held frequent dinner parties for his friends, among whom were Edmund Burke, Sir Joseph Banks, Edward Gibbon, Charles James Fox and Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose collected works he edited in 1797–8.

Inhibited in his later years by fading eyesight, he left unfinished a new octavo edition of Shakespeare, which was published in 1821. The interiors of Malone’s late 18th-century house remain largely unaltered, although the façade was rebuilt and additional floors were added in about 1900, possibly after the death of a later resident – David Edward Hughes.