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2. The 1772 Edition of Goldsmith's Traveller
In the Daily Advertiser for Thursday, 27 February 1772 appears the following advertisement: "On Saturday next will be published, . . . With a Copper-Plate Title Page, . . . the Eighth Edition of THE TRAVELLER . . ."; and the poem is duly announced as published "This Day" on 29 February. The difficulty is that no edition of the work between 1770 and 1774 is known.
To make up for this lack there is (in addition to a duodecimo piracy called the fifth edition) one superfluous edition dated 1770. The sixth edition, with a title printed from type as in all earlier editions, was published 29 June 1770. The seventh edition, "With a Copper-Plate Title Page," was advertised as published on 8 December;[1] and certainly no further edition was needed in 1770, since the seventh edition was still being advertised on 26 February 1771. There are, however, two unnumbered editions with titles printed from the same engraved plate dated 1770. The probable explanation is that one of these is the missing eighth edition of 1772, for which the title-page plate was left unaltered. The plate appears to have been changed by the addition of two roman numerals to the date only for the edition (called on the half-title the ninth) of 1774.
Although the two unnumbered editions with the engraved title dated 1770 have the same collation and are without press figures, they can be
| 70b | 70c |
| But as a | But |
| from Switzer- | from |
| only inscribed to | only in- |
| it, when | it |
| man, who, | man, |
Although 70b and 70c both derive from 70a (the sixth edition), since they follow the new readings of that edition, they are not independent reprints of 70a, for they agree against 70a in two substantive readings and in a large number of variants in accidentals; consequently one of the two must have used the other as copy. That 70b is the earlier is established by the fact that it agrees with 70a against 70c in a number of readings in accidentals and more conclusively by the fact that the prose dedication of 70b is a line-for-line reprint of 70a while that of 70c is not. 70b can thus be identified as the seventh edition published 8 December 1770 and 70c as the eighth edition published 29 February 1772.
Copies examined. 70b: Forster Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum; University of Chicago; University of London; Friedman (2 copies). 70c: British Museum (2 copies); Forster Collection; R. S. Crane (2 copies).
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