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 ''Complete Works of William Shakespeare'' is the standard name given to any volume containing all the plays and poems of William Shakespeare. Some editions include several works that were not completely of Shakespeare's authorship (collaborativ ...

'' is an edition containing all the plays and poems of

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

. A ''Complete Works'' published edition of a

text corpus In linguistics, a corpus (plural ''corpora'') or text corpus is a language resource consisting of a large and structured set of texts (nowadays usually electronically stored and processed). In corpus linguistics, they are used to do statistical a ...

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". "Collected works" is often treated as a synonym. A distinction began to be seen clearly in the second half of the 18th century. The

Latin language Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

equivalent ''Opera Omnia'' is still used in English, for example, to refer to the works of

Galen Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus ( el, Κλαύδιος Γαληνός; September 129 – c. AD 216), often Anglicized as Galen () or Galen of Pergamon, was a Greek physician, surgeon and philosopher in the Roman Empire. Considered to be one of ...

Leonhard Euler Leonhard Euler ( , ; 15 April 170718 September 1783) was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician and engineer who founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made pioneering and influential discoveries in ma ...

. 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 Gerbrand Adriaenszoon Bredero (16 March 1585 – 23 August 1618) was a Dutch poet and playwright in the period known as the Dutch Golden Age. Life Gerbrand Adriaenszoon Bredero was born on 16 March 1585 in Amsterdam in the Dutch Republic, ...

, in 1637/8. *The first critical complete edition of a musical composer's works has been identified as '' Joh. Seb. Bach's Werke'' (of

Johann Sebastian Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the '' Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard w ...

) published 1851 to 1926 by the Bach Gesellschaft at Leipzig, in 46 volumes. *The ''

Opera Omnia Leonhard Euler ''Opera Omnia Leonhard Euler (Leonhardi Euleri Opera omnia)'' is the compilation of Leonhard Euler's scientific writings. The project of this compilation was undertaken by the Euler Committee of the Swiss Academy of Sciences, established in 1908, ...

'', a compilation of the works of the mathematician

, began publication in 1911 and volumes were still being compiled for publication . *The

Iwanami Shoten is a Japanese publishing company based in Tokyo.Louis Frédéric, ''Japan Encyclopedia'', Harvard University Press, 2005, p. 409. Iwanami Shoten was founded in 1913 by Iwanami Shigeo. Its first major publication was Natsume Sōseki's novel ''Ko ...

complete works of

Natsume Sōseki , born , was a Japanese novelist. He is best known around the world for his novels ''Kokoro'', '' Botchan'', ''I Am a Cat'', '' Kusamakura'' and his unfinished work '' Light and Darkness''. He was also a scholar of British literature and writer ...

, new edition, set up a Japanese model for complete works of other authors.

References

Publications Authority Works based on multiple works {{lit-stub