THE 1728 DUNCIAD IN A TRACT VOLUME
[POPE, Alexander.]
The Dunciad. An heroic Poem. In three Books. The second Edition.
‘Dublin, Printed; London, Re-printed for A. Dodd. 1728.’
[bound with six other works.]
12mo, pp. [2], viii, 51, [1], with a half-title and an engraved frontispiece (short tear at inner margin); bound with six other works of 1715–20 (see below) in near-contemporary half-calf and marbled boards, spine lettered ‘Miscellanies 1715’, spine split, joints fragile but just holding; manuscript index to front endpaper; from the library at Ombersley Court, with the small armorial bookplate of Lord Sandys.
Second edition, rare, and of considerable interest, largely a reimpression of the first edition but with gathering B, most of C, and D4v reset.
Pope went to considerable effort to maintain secrecy in printing The Dunciad, and the supposed Dublin edition mentioned in the imprint was an invention, possibly intended to suggest Swift as author. The printer was James Bettenham; Anne Dodd, who lacked the right of holding copyrights, was the distributor but not the publisher as such. The first edition was printed in both 12mo and 8vo, and priority was the subject of much debate from the mid-nineteenth century, but consensus now gives it to the 12mo.
Three further impressions quickly followed the first, one designated ‘second edition’ as here, and two designated ‘third edition’, all providing ample evidence of Pope’s close involvement in production, as he made changes both stylistic and typographic during the course of printing. Changes in this ‘second edition’ include the replacement of ‘scholiasts’ with ‘Scholiasts’ and the replacement of ‘pen’ with ‘quill’ (both on p. 9). Even as he was making these changes, Pope continued to tinker with the text, publishing The Dunciad, variorum in 1729.
Copies of any of the 1728 duodecimo Dunciads are now very scarce. The only other copy of this ‘second edition’ on the market in the last twenty-five years was the Hoe-Chew-Bechet-J. O. Edwards copy in full modern morocco.
ESTC T5539; Griffith 202; Foxon P766.
The Dunciad is found here in an interesting tract volume, including the following items:
[TOOLY, Thomas.] Homer in a Nut-Shell: or, the Iliad of Homer in immortal Doggrel. By Nickydemus Ninnyhammer, F. G. … London, W. Sparkes, 1715. 12mo. pp. [12], 50, 53–68 (wanting C8, torn away). One particularly prurient passage mentioning Helen ‘f-gg-ng with a carrot’ has the missing letters inserted in manuscript and the annotation ‘too bad’ in the margin.
First edition of this ‘coarse and vituperative’ Iliad-travesty, attributed to Thomas Tooly. The note ‘To the Reader’ announces that he had intended to ‘translate all of Homer’s works’, only to be mortified at discovering Pope’s Iliad. Recently scholarship has suggested that the preliminaries are ‘almost certainly’ by Pope or Arbuthnot. ESTC T45490; Foxon T420. See Guerinot p. 337.
[ANSTIS, John.] The Form of an Installation of a Knight of the Garter. [London,] 1720. 8vo, pp. 24.
First edition, very rare. ESTC T681 (British Library, Cambridge, Windsor; and Armagh)
Provenance: from the library at Ombersley Court, with the bookplate of the politician Samuel Sandys (1695–1770), created first Baron Sandys in 1743. MP for Worcester for twenty-five years from 1718, initially a supporter and later an opponent of Walpole, Sandys had been a subscriber to Pope’s Iliad (1715–20).
