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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


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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.