University of Virginia Library

In his recent valuable bibliography of The Earliest Editions of the Letters of Junius (1957), published by the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, Mr. T. H. Bowyer questions the existence of a third edition of Wheble's 1771 collection. An edition described as "this third edition" was advertised in the Public Advertiser on 29 February and 2 March, 1772 (Bowyer, p. 44). Mr. Bowyer, however, says that he has "not found any edition specifically stated to be the third" and feels that the "advertisement looks like an attempt to forestall an anticipated fall in sales on the publication of AE [i.e. the author's edition printed by Woodfall, published 3 March 1772], possibly with sophisticated earlier editions" (pp.

44-45). In the absence of a clearly marked third edition this would seem a likely explanation, but for once it is possible to exculpate Wheble. An entirely reset third edition of Volume I does exist. The problem of Volume II will be treated separately later.

Two copies of Volume I, third edition, have been found:

Following Mr. Bowyer's collational formula, the collation for Volume I (Copy A) is:

The collation for Copy B is the same, except that sig. πA4 ('DEDICATION.') is lacking.

One point immediately distinguishes the third edition from the second as described by Mr. Bowyer, #[13], p. 52. Sig. A1b is not blank as in the second edition; it contains the following 'Advertisement':

A page for page comparison of the two editions establishes beyond question that Volume I has been completely reset. Detailed evidence of

various kinds (position of running-titles, ruler test, etc.) could be cited for every signature, but it will be sufficient to record the following differences. (a) The third edition is not a line for line reprint (compare sigs. B1b, C1b, D2a, L4a, R2a). (b) In dating letters the second edition regularly uses roman for the month; the third uses italic (the second edition also tends to use abbreviations for the month; for example, sig. O4b 'Feb.' for 'February' [third edition]; (c) The first two words of most of the letters in the third edition are in caps and small-caps; in the second they are usually in lower case, following the initial capital.[3]

Copy A contains one unique feature. Preceding sig. A Junius' 'DEDICATION TO THE English Nation.' has been inserted. The four leaves are signed A on the recto of the first leaf (the other leaves are unsigned and there is no catchword on sig. [A4]b) and paged i-viii. Copy-text for the 'DEDICATION' is clearly Woodfall's first edition (1772), though the contents is here reduced from ten to eight pages. It is printed on a bluish-tinted paper with one of the common 'Pro Patria' watermarks (cf. Heawood, Nos. 3695-3718), a paper which appears again in Volume II (Copies A and D) in both the typographical title-page and the inserted sig. 2C. Wheble first included the 'DEDICATION' as a regular part of Volume I in his 1775 editions (Bowyer, #[21]), #[22], the last dated 1771), where, however, it is from a different setting of type.

So far as Volume II is concerned it is only misleading, I think, to talk about second or third editions. There is only one edition of Volume II, a volume put together from five parts each separately issued by Wheble, the first part advertised in the Public Advertiser for 20 November 1770, the fifth part for 29 February 1772 (Bowyer, p. 48). Now it will be recalled that Wheble advertised the third edition of the Letters (i.e., Volume I) in the same issue of the Public Advertiser in which he announced the publication of the fifth part of Volume II. As a complete volume then we should expect to find Volume II most often associated with Volume I of the third edition; such, on the evidence of the scant known copies, is the case. Only four complete copies of Volume II are recorded: two (Copy A, paired with Copy A of Volume I above; Copy B, University College copy [Bowyer, p. 147]) are paired with Volume I, third edition; one (Copy C, British Museum copy #i [Bowyer, p. 59]) with Volume I, second edition; and one (Copy D, Mr. Bowyer's private copy, pp. 59, 105) with Volume I of the 1775 Wheble edition (Bowyer, # [21]). The other two known copies of Volume I, second edition (British Museum copy #ii and King's College, London) are paired with part one (sig. B) of Volume II only (Bowyer, pp. 59-60).

The problems connected with Volume II are concerned with the title-page and sig. 2C. In Copies B and C there is an engraved title-page, adapted from Volume I (see Bowyer's illustration, p. 56), and sig. 2C is lacking. Copies A and D, however, have typographical title-pages, essentially identical,[4] and contain sig. 2C inserted in sig. 2B. Moreover, the typographical title-page and sig. 2C of both copies are printed on the same bluish-tinted paper used for the 'DEDICATION' in Volume I (Copy A) of the third edition, and, like the 'DEDICATION', sig. 2C is set directly from a copy of Woodfall's 1772 authorized edition.[5] From this it would seem clear that, as with the 'DEDICATION', sig. 2C was an afterthought. Whether Wheble surreptitiously obtained advance sheets of Woodfall's edition, or whether at some later time he purloined the 'DEDICATION' and the contents of sig. 2C from Woodfall's published text, must remain an open question. The second possibility makes it easier to account for the omission of sig. 2C in Copies B and C, though such an omission is not in itself fatal to the first. Whichever view we may take, fraud was obviously in Wheble's mind, a fraud to which he may have hoped to give some shadow of substance by retaining the date 1771 on his newly set typographical title-page (the bluish-tinted paper on which the title-page is printed links it with the materials cribbed from Woodfall's edition).[6] In this way Wheble, not Woodfall, would appear to be the first to present Junius' 'DEDICATION' (and the portion of the letter on sig. 2C) to a grateful public. Ironically, however high-minded his intentions, Wheble was over-zealous. The 'new' material on sig. 2C was already included in Wheble's own fifth part of Volume II in a more complete form as Letter XVI!