Collier chose criminality because he believed he would not be taken seriously on his own merits, even though it was well known that he had been friends with Keats, his father had entertained Wordsworth and other luminaries at the family home, and he had tutored Singer and Knight to some extent in perfectly legitimate editorial method. Nevertheless, entrusted with valuable mss. and books, he forged names and signatures and commentary in an unconvincing secretary hand. His greatest crime was his interpolation of neo-seventeenth-century marginalia in the "Perkins Folio," a copy of F2, ruining it forever. He was discovered and excoriated. Oddly, the emendations he forged were good and tenable conjectures, and would have been acceptable in book form or as part of an edition under his own name, without the folderol travesty of "Tho. Perkins." He published four Shakespeare collections and the first is usually the one that scholars consult. Because his chicanery was so intertwined with his second and third editions, scholars often quote them because, like it or not, they are part of the textual history of the plays. Some later scholars adapted those emendations in their published editions. The fourth edition (1878) was advertised as a clean break from the past, though he sometimes defends "Perkins folio" materials.
1842-44
COL1v1 COL1v2 COL1v3 COL1v4 COL1v5 COL1v6 COL1v7 COL1v8
1853
COL2
1858
COL3v1 COL3v2 COL3v3 COL3v4 COL3v5 COL3v6
1878
COL4v1 COL4v2 COL4v3 COL4v4 COL4v5 COL4v6 COL4v7 COL4v8
Univeristy of Delaware page on the Collier Controversy
Terry Gray's page on Collier
Reasons for a New Edition (1842)
Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare's Plays from Early Manuscript Corrections in a Copy of the Folio, 1632 (1853)