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 The ''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 (collabora ...

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

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 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 and natural language processing, a corpus (: corpora) or text corpus is a dataset, consisting of natively digital and older, digitalized, language resources, either annotated or unannotated. Annotated, they have been used in corp ...

is normally accompanied with additional information and

critical apparatus A critical apparatus () in textual criticism of primary source material, is an organized system of notations to represent, in a single text, the complex history of that text in a concise form useful to diligent readers and scholars. The apparatu ...

. 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 spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

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

Galen Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus (; September 129 – AD), often Anglicization, anglicized as Galen () or Galen of Pergamon, was a Ancient Rome, Roman and Greeks, Greek physician, surgeon, and Philosophy, philosopher. Considered to be one o ...

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

. 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, where ...

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

Joh. Seb. Bach's Werke Joh. Seb. Bach's Werke () is the Bach Gesellschaft's collected edition of Johann Sebastian Bach's compositions, published in 61 volumes in the second half of the 19th century. The series is also known as Bach-Gesellschaft edition (; BGA), or as ''B ...

'' (of

Johann Sebastian Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (German: Help:IPA/Standard German, �joːhan zeˈbasti̯an baχ ( – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque music, Baroque period. He is known for his prolific output across a variety ...

) published 1851 to 1926 by the

Bach Gesellschaft The German Bach-Gesellschaft (Bach Society) was a society formed in 1850 for the express purpose of publishing the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach without editorial additions. The collected works are known as the Bach-Gesellschaft-Ausg ...

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 190 ...

'', 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 '' ...

complete works of

Natsume Sōseki , born , was a Japanese novelist. He is best known for his novels ''Kokoro'', ''Botchan'', ''I Am a Cat'', ''Kusamakura (novel), Kusamakura'' and his unfinished work ''Light and Darkness (novel), Light and Darkness''. He was also a scholar of Br ...

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

References

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