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The Missing Third Edition of Wheble's
Junius (1771)
by
G. Blakemore Evans
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.
Two copies of Volume I, third edition, have been found:
Following Mr. Bowyer's collational formula, the collation for Volume I (Copy A) is:
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
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!
Notes
Mr. T. H. Bowyer has been most kind in answering questions about his own copies and in re-examining the University College, London, copy. My friend Professor Bruce Harkness unselfishly took on himself the burden of collating my copy of the third edition with the British Museum copies of the second edition (Volume I). Mr. Bowyer writes me that he has recently acquired a copy of the third edition from Sotheby. Volume I appears to be identical with Copy A as described below; Volume II is also identical with Copy A except that (a) the means used to convert 'I' to 'II' on the typographical title-page may be different, and (b) sigs. 2C4 and 2B2 (blank recto and verso) are wanting.
The slight differences between these measurements and those recorded by Bowyer (p. 52) for the second edition may be accounted for by paper shrinkage. The plate seems to be the same in both editions.
All eight typographical errors listed by Bowyer (pp. 54-55) for the second edition have been corrected in the third. The third, of course, adds some of its own; for example; sig. A1a, line 4 'withour' for 'without'; sig. B8b, line 1 'whithout' for 'without' (catchword correct); sig. C3a, the heading 'LETTER III.' omitted; sig. D2b 'brided' for 'bribed'; sig. G5b, 'ETTER XVI.' for 'LETTER XVI.'; sig. Q4b (catchword) 'member,' for 'member.'.
The title-page of Copy D is identical except that the 'II' of 'VOL. II.' has been converted from 'I' by a penstroke instead of being handstamped as in Copy A. Copy B appears to lack the catchword 'LET-' on 2B1b; Mr. Bowyer, however, tells me that the paper is noticeably thin at this point, suggesting that the catchword has been scratched away. Another copy of this typographical title-page appears in a copy of Volume II of the 1775 edition (Bowyer, p. 105) in the British Museum. Mr. Bowyer assures me that it is too browned to determine whether it too is on the same bluish-tinted paper.
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