University of Virginia Library

The material in this article is drawn from a microfilm of the ledgers which was deposited in the Bodleian Library by William Todd, who numbered the ledgers A through K. References to specific ledgers are included in the text (e. g., Ledger J, f. 19v, etc.). For help in the preparation of the article, I am indebted to Miss Patricia Hernlund, graduate student in the English Department at the University of Chicago.

Rasselas, ed. R. W. Chapman (1927), p. xiv; cited hereafter as "Rasselas."

Chapman also quotes (ibid., pp. xiii, n. 1; xiv, n. 4) anecdotes in Sir James Prior's Life of Edmond Malone and a letter by Horace Walpole which suggest £100 as the purchase price of the first edition. This amount is not the same, however, as any of the three alternative prices mentioned in Johnson's letter of January 20, 1759 to William Strahan (Letters of Samuel Johnson, ed. R. W. Chapman [1952], I, 117-118; cited hereafter as "Letters"); I have in preparation a new interpretation of Johnson's letter, entitled "Johnson's 'little Pompadour': A Textual Crux and a Hypothesis."

Letters, I, 118.

For information about the title-pages of the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth editions, I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. Robert F. Metzdorf, of Yale University Library.

"William Strahan and His Ledgers," Library, 4th ser., III (1923), 283-284; cited hereafter as "Austen-Leigh."

Rasselas, p. xi, n. 2. In his and Allen Hazen's "Johnsonian Bibliography: A Supplement to Courtney" (Oxford Bibliographical Society Proceedings & Papers, V [1936-39], 142), Chapman says flatly, "The printer was William Strahan," and refers to Austen-Leigh's article.

The ledger entries about the printing of the first two editions are also summarized in Austen-Leigh's article (pp. 283-284). The first edition was published on April 19, 1759; the second on June 26 (James L. Clifford, "Some Remarks on Candide and Rasselas," Bicentenary Essays on "Rasselas," ed. Magdi Wahba [1959], p. 8; Rasselas, p. xvi).

According to a notice in the Public Advertiser, the third edition was published on April 11, 1760.

According to a notice in the Public Advertiser, the fifth edition was published on May 13, 1775.

It was published, according to a notice in the Public Advertiser, on May 31, 1783.

The "Mr Longman" of this, and later, entries was apparently either Thomas (II) or Thomas Norton. Thomas (II) was born in 1731 and died in 1797; Thomas Norton, who was born in 1771, "began to take his father's place in the firm about 1792" (H. R. Plomer, Dictionary of . . . Printers and Booksellers . . . from 1726 to 1775 [1932], pp. 158-159).