Editors Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen have used the latest techniques, electronic datasets and research to compile William Shakespeare Complete Works (Macmillan, £19.99), undertaken at the request of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

This definitive edition of Shakespeare's text is based on the 1623 first folio, and provides the reader with an outstanding general introduction, along with individual essays which introduce each of his 38 plays, his sonnets and long poems and detail plots, dates and sources.

Footnotes are placed legibly at the bottom of each page, providing a full explanation of all words and phrases which today's reader may be encountering for the first time.

Its clear, single-column page design probably accounts for the fact that this book won the 2007 British Book Design Award for Literature when it was first published in hard back. The excellent collection of photographs of the RSC's past performances add an extra dimension not found in other collections.