Johnsoniana (4 Ergebnisse)

Now first reprinted from the original record of the Proceedings, with an Introduction and Notes. Quarto. 20 pages. Two plates. Sewn wrappers.Slight creasing to covers. Head of spine nicked. Very good. Scarce.

4to bifolium. The text, in small print, covers the final three pages. On aged and foxed paper. Inscribed, at the head of the title, 'from R. W. C.' The recipient was Cecil Harmsworth, who has written in pencil, beneath the inscription: 'C H | 26/ii/ 1927'. (Harmsworth was the proprietor of the Johnson house, which he had bought in 1911.) Scarce: no copy in the British Library, and the only copy on COPAC at Oxford.…

Fourth edition. Fourth edition. Frontispiece of Johnson by Harding, etched by Trotter. 204pp. 1 vols. 12mo. Full mottled calf, rebacked. Some internal staining, else very good Frontispiece of Johnson by Harding, etched by Trotter. 204pp. 1 vols. 12mo.

Small 8vo in fours, engraved frontispiece (damaged at head, and repaired, but with no loss of image), and pp. [ii], ix, [i], 195; cut close and unevenly at foredge, shaving the text on a very few pages (e.g. pp. 6 and 47-8); rebound in modern quarter calf over marbled boards, spine with morocco gilt label. Early edition, perhaps the third to be published in London: there were two London editions in 1776, and a piracy in Dublin: this one followed the next year, and appears to be the last published. Johnson himself was unaware of this unauthorised collection of his sayings until Boswell told him about it on a trip by boat to Blackfriars. Johnson called it 'a mighty impudent thing' but declined to prosecute the publisher, even though Boswell pointed out that by not disavowing it he might be thought to be admitting it as genuine. This was on 16 March, when Boswell says that the book was 'advertised to be published in a few days' (Hill Powell II 432). The bons mots, by the way, are not by any means all Johnsonian: other contemporaries such as Sheridan, Goldsmith and Foote are prominently represented. This edition has been revised, and has a new preface, signed 'T.M.', in which the editor claims that he has 'expunged all indecent, low and hackneyed jests; and he dares to present this edition to the most austere philosopher, or rigid matron: yet he flatters himself it will not be found the less entertaining, by those of all ages and ranks, who prefer decent wit and good sense, to indelicate and immoral ribaldry' (p. v). ESTC records twelve copies, although as usual the copies located at Harvard overstate their actual holdings (they have two, not three, copies, and one of those is incomplete). In the UK there are just three (BL, Bodleian and Rylands), and in North America they are only to be found at McMaster, Yale, Clark, Harvard and Smith College; there is also one at the National Library of Australia.…