Isaac Reed was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

an editor

Editing

Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...

.

Life

The son of a baker, he was born in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. He was articled to a solicitor

Solicitor

Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...

, and eventually set up as a conveyancer at Staple Inn

Staple Inn

Staple Inn is a building on the south side of High Holborn in London, England. Located near Chancery Lane tube station, it is used as the London office of the Institute of Actuaries and is the last surviving Inn of Chancery and is a listed building....

, where he had a large practice.

Works

His major work was the Biographia dramatica (2 vols., 1782), a set of biographies of dramatists and a descriptive dictionary of their plays. This book, which was an enlargement of David Erskine Baker

David Erskine Baker

-Life:David Erskine Baker was the son of Henry Baker, F.R.S., and his wife, the youngest daughter of Daniel Defoe. Baker was born in the parish of St Dunstan-in-the-West in the City of London, on 30 January 1730, and named after his godfather, David Erskine, 9th Earl of Buchan...

's Companion to the Playhouse (2 vols., 1764), was re-edited (3 vols.) by Stephen Jones

Stephen Jones (editor)

Stephen Jones was an English literary editor, best known for his revision of the Biographia Dramatica.-Life:Eldest son of Giles Jones, secretary to the York Buildings Water Company, and nephew of Griffith Jones , he was born in London in 1763, and admitted to St Paul's School, London on 24 April...

 in 1811. The original work by Baker had been based on Gerard Langbaine the Younger's Account of the English Dramatick Poets (1691), Giles Jacob

Giles Jacob

Giles Jacob was a British legal writer and literary critic who figures as one of the dunces in Alexander Pope's 1728 Dunciad:Pope's lines single Jacob out for satire primarily for his dogmatism and pettiness...

's Poetical Register (1719), Thomas Whincop

Thomas Whincop

-Life:He is identified as the son of Thomas Whincop, D.D., rector of St Mary Abchurch. On that basis he was educated at Merchant Taylor's School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He lost considerable sums in the South Sea bubble during 1721, and died at Totteridge, where he was buried on 1...

's List of all the Dramatic Authors (printed with his tragedy of Scanderbeg, 1747) and the manuscripts of Thomas Coxeter

Thomas Coxeter

-Life:Born at Lechlade in Gloucestershire on 20 September 1689, he was educated at Coxwell, Berkshire, and at Magdalen School in Oxford. On 7 July 1705 he was entered a commoner of Trinity College, Oxford...

. Reed's Notitia dramatica (Addit. MSS. 253902, British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

), supplementary to the Biographia, was never published.

He also revised Robert Dodsley

Robert Dodsley

Robert Dodsley was an English bookseller and miscellaneous writer.-Life:He was born near Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, where his father was master of the free school....

's Collection of Old Plays (12 vols., 1780); and re-edited Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

 and George Steevens

George Steevens

George Steevens was an English Shakespearean commentator.He was born at Poplar, the son of a captain and later director of the East India Company. He was educated at Eton College and at King's College, Cambridge, where he remained from 1753 to 1756...

's edition (1773) of Shakespeare. Reed's edition was published in ten volumes (1785), and he gave great assistance to Steevens in his edition (1793). He was Steevens's literary executor

Literary executor

A literary executor is a person with decision-making power in respect of a literary estate. According to Wills, Administration and Taxation: a practical guide "A will may appoint different executors to deal with different parts of the estate...

, and in 1803 published another edition (21 vols.) based on Steevens's later collections. This, which is known as the first variorum, was re-issued ten years later.

After his death, his library of theatrical literature was catalogued for sale as Bibliotheca Reediana (1807).