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Notes
The ledgers of Henry Woodfall and William Strahan, printers for Millar, furnish valuable information about the printing of Joseph Andrews. See P. T. P., "Woodfall's Ledger, 1734-1747," N&Q, 1st S., XI (2 June 1855), 419; and J. Paul de Castro, "Fieldingiana," N&Q, 12th S., III (November 1917), 465, together with the "Bibliographical Note" to de Castro's edition of Joseph Andrews (1929). De Castro, however, misread the date of Strahan's entry for the printing of the fifth edition, which was through the press in April 1751, not 1750.
The following is a correct account of the publishing history of the first five editions, which, as given in Cross, de Castro, and Dudden, is both incomplete and inaccurate: (1) Advertisements heralding the publication of the first edition on Monday, 22 February 1742, were carried in The Champion (Feb. 11, 13, 16, 18, 20) and in The Daily Post (Feb. 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17). The novel was duly announced in The Daily Post for February 22 as published that day; The Champion, which was not issued on Mondays, carried the notice on Tuesday the 23rd. (2) Although the second edition was not listed in The Gentleman's Magazine and The London Magazine until August 1742, it had been announced in The Daily Post for Thursday, June 10, and in The London Evening Post for June 12-15 as published on those days; since the edition was through Woodfall's presses by May 31, a date of publication in June is quite likely. (3) Fixing a precise date for the third edition is more difficult. During the week of Tuesday, March 15, to Saturday, March 19, 1743, The General Evening Post promised that the edition would be published "On Monday next" (i.e., on March 21); publication was accordingly announced in both The General Evening Post and The St. James Evening Post (not published on Mondays) for Tuesday, March 22-Thursday, March 24. But the same pattern of advertisements was followed in The London Daily Post, and General Advertiser exactly one week later: the numbers for Friday and Saturday, March 25 and 26, declare that the edition will be published "On Monday next" (i.e., on March 28), on which date publication is duly noticed. Since the third edition was through Strahan's presses by February 20, a date of publication on either March 21 or 28 could be correct. Given this inconsistency, it is impossible to fix the date any more narrowly; it is tempting, however, to follow The Daily Post, which began advertising publication on March 24 and carried daily announcements for a week thereafter. This date would agree, in part at least, with those of The General Evening Post and The St. James Evening Post. (4) After a week-long fanfare in the pages of The General Advertiser, the publication of the fourth edition was announced in that journal on Saturday, 29 October 1748. Curiously, Fielding's own Jacobite's Journal did not carry the advertisement until a week later, Saturday, November 5. (5) Timed to appear simultaneously with Amelia, the fifth edition reached the bookstalls on Thursday, 19 December 1751 (see The General Advertiser for that date). Notice began in The London Daily Advertiser a day later.
The General Advertiser carried notices of the edition both before and after, as well as on, the date of publication, 29 October 1748: see the numbers for October 22, 24—29, 31, November 1—5.
Hereafter, references to the Textual Notes will be indicated by the abbreviation "TN." Not all the readings of the fourth edition can be trusted, of course. An example is TN 75, in which the original phrasing more accurately echoes the translation of Voltaire's Letters Concerning the English Nation (1733) that Fielding apparently used. The translation reads: "But then it must be also confess'd, that the Stilts of the figurative Style on which the English Tongue is lifted up, raises the Genius at the same Time very far aloft, tho' with an irregular Pace" (Letter XVIII, p. 178). Usually, however, there is no such convenient method of testing the authenticity of a revision. And even here it is possible (though not very probable) that Fielding "corrupted" his own text, perhaps having forgotten his source, or believing that the shift of the negative (from the adjective within the phrase to the preposition governing the phrase itself) was better English, syntactically more direct and logical.
One of these readings, and possibly the other, is clearly an improvement. One could, I suppose, defend "pecked" (A) or "picked" (C) as descriptions of Mrs. Tow-wouse's chin, but "peeked" (i.e., peaked) is both more likely and more usual. Consider, for example, the old usurer in Smollett's Roderick Random, Chapter XI, whose chin is "peaked and prominent." It would also seem more precise for Parson Adams, smarting from the rough jests of the company at the "roasting" squire's, to say that his Order was not a suitable "Subject" of scorn; his own experience, as well as that of many other clergymen in those rude days, is enough to show that the priesthood was the "Object" of contempt (see below, pp. 93-94.)
Besides Digeon (pp. 59-69), two other scholars have briefly treated Fielding's revisions of Joseph Andrews: Erich Bosdorf, Entstehungsgeschichte von Fieldings "Joseph Andrews" (Weimar, 1908), pp. 18-25; and Wilbur L. Cross, The History of Henry Fielding (1918), I, 352-354. Although Digeon's remarks are occasionally illuminating, these discussions do little more than notice a few of the more extensive variants.
A convenient catalogue of many of these oversights may be found in F. Homes Dudden, Henry Fielding: His Life, Works, and Times (1952), I, 352-353, n. 8.
Sir Thomas Robinson (1700?-1777) was commissioner of the excise under Walpole and appointed Governor of Barbados in 1741. He was "remarkably tall and lean," as Horace Walpole remarked, and the epithet "Long Sir Thomas" was a familiar one.
For an excellent analysis of Fielding's rhetorical techniques, see Henry Knight Miller, Essays on Fielding's "Miscellanies": A Commentary on Volume One (1961), pp. 150-163; also pp. 378-386).
Fielding added this passage to the second edition (through the press by 31 May 1742) at what must have been near the same time that he was composing his own consolatory essay, Of the Remedy of Affliction for the Loss of Our Friends, prompted by the death of his daughter, Charlotte, early in March 1742. In his admirable discussion of this essay and its place within the tradition of the consolatio, Henry K. Miller briefly examines Adams' impromptu sermon to Joseph (Essays on Fielding's "Miscellanies," pp. 228-271; especially, pp. 244-253).
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