For more than a century the most puzzling bibliographical problem
of Alexander Pope's satire The Dunciad, and the one which
has
stimulated the most spirited but not always the most pleasant debate, has
been the question of which of the 1728 impressions was printed first. The
issue first rose in the pages of Notes and Queries in the
1850's;
the discussion reached its greatest intensity in the ripostes between R. H.
Griffith and T. J. Wise early in this
century; and in the 1950's the argument arrived at a stasis after a leading
modern bibliographer, David Foxon, confirmed some of the earlier
findings. Though a belief in the precedence of the 12° impression over
the 8° has now become orthodox, it is an acceptance based mainly on
the faith that a few scattered typographical variations are sufficient to reveal
the printing order. In the pages that follow I shall attempt to establish the
order of the impressions more conclusively, relying not on newly available
but rather on freshly examined evidence, particularly that of running titles.
This evidence, combined with the insights provided by resettings of portions
of the text, also clarifies the printing of the three additional impressions in
1728 by the
Dunciad's first printer, James Bettenham.
