Complete works

The complete works of an artist, writer, musician, group, etc., is a collection of all of their cultural works. For example, Complete Works of Shakespeare is an edition containing all the plays and poems of William Shakespeare. A Complete Works published edition of a text corpus is normally accompanied with additional information and critical apparatus. It may include notes, introduction, a biographical sketch, and may pay attention to textual variants.

Similarly, the term body of work may be used to describe the entirety of the creative or academic output produced by a particular individual or unit.

Terminology

Complete works may be titled by a single word, "Works".^[1] "Collected works" is often treated as a synonym. A distinction began to be seen clearly in the second half of the 18th century.^[2]

The Latin language equivalent Opera Omnia is still used in English, for example, to refer to the works of Galen or Leonhard Euler.^[3]^[4] German usage distinguishes de:Gesamtwerk as a complete corpus, de:Gesamtausgabe for a published edition of the works, and Gesammelte Werke or collected works that may be selective in some way. A contrasting term is "selected works", which is a collection of works chosen according to some criterion, e.g., by prominence, or as a representative selection.

Examples

The first literary author to have "complete works" published, in the modern sense, has been identified as Gerbrand Adriaenszoon Bredero, in 1637/8.^[2]
The first critical complete edition of a musical composer's works has been identified as Joh. Seb. Bach's Werke (of Johann Sebastian Bach) published 1851 to 1926 by the Bach Gesellschaft at Leipzig, in 46 volumes.^[5]
The Opera Omnia Leonhard Euler, a compilation of the works of the mathematician Leonhard Euler, began publication in 1911 and volumes were still being compiled for publication as of 2022^[update].^[4]^[6]
The Iwanami Shoten complete works of Natsume Sōseki, new edition, set up a Japanese model for complete works of other authors.^[7]

References

^ "Using Uniform Titles: Collective Titles". University of Nebraska's Comprehensive Research Library. Archived from the original on 2010-05-28.
^ ^a ^b Braber, Dr H. van den; Delft, Dr M. van; Dijk, Dr N. van; Glas, Dr F. de; Keblusek, Dr M. (2006). New Perspectives in Book History: Contributions from the Low Country. Uitgeversmaatschappij Walburg Pers. pp. 67–68. ISBN 9789057304316.
^ Galen, Claudius (1828). Opera Omnia. Leipzig: Carl Cnobloch.
^ ^a ^b "The works". Bernoulli-Euler Society. Archived from the original on 11 September 2022. Retrieved 11 September 2022.
^ Apel, Willi (2003). The Harvard Dictionary of Music. Harvard University Press. p. 281. ISBN 9780674011632.
^ Dunham, William (1999). Euler: The Master of Us All. Mathematical Association of America. p. 175. ISBN 9780883853283.
^ Buckley, Sandra (2009). The Encyclopedia of Contemporary Japanese Culture. Taylor & Francis. p. 223. ISBN 9780415481526.