[JOHNSON, Samuel].
A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. London: Printed for W. Strahan; and T. Cadell … 1775.
London: Printed for W. Strahan; and T. Cadell … 1775
8vo., pp. [2], 384, wanting the errata leaf A2; 3 leaves (O4, O8, T3) supplied from a slightly shorter copy; monogram stamp (crowned M) to title-page; contemporary calf, slight wear to joints, spine chipped.
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A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. London: Printed for W. Strahan; and T. Cadell … 1775.
Unacknowledged second edition. Two thousand copies of the first edition were printed as far as sheet R when Strahan, sensing the demand, decided to increase the press run to four thousand. The 2000 overrun sheets, T-Z and 2A-2B, and a reprint of the earlier sheets A-D and F-R, may be identified by an asterisked signature on the first leaf of each gathering, needed to distinguish whether the sheets were to be bound with the twelve-line or six-line errata, five of the eleven errors having been corrected in the reprinting. Signature E does not have an asterisk (Todd thinks that it was the first sheet to be reprinted before the need to distinguish the settings was realised), nor does S, apparently deferred until the end and then worked off continuously in 4000 copies. These complications were due in no small measure to Johnson’s dilatory revision of proofs.
Because there is no edition statement, this second edition was often described wrongly as the first edition, second issue. S. C. Roberts first questioned this description in the TLS in 1920, and R. W. Chapman further discriminated between the two editions in Review of English Studies in 1932. A corrected proof of Chapman’s article is laid in to this copy. The clearest account is W. B. Todd, ‘The Printing of Johnson’s Journey (1775)’, Studies in Bibliography, VI (1954), 247-54.
The first printing and this unacknowledged second edition were issued more or less simultaneously in January 1775, when all 4000 copies sold out in a week.
Courtney & Nichol Smith, pp. 117-23; Chapman & Hazen, pp. 151-2; Fleeman 75.1J/2a.
