University of Virginia Library

"Oxford, Robert Harley, 1st Earl of" in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., 1910-11.

Shelfmark Halliwell-Phillipps 770 is described as "Proposals for Printing by Subscription the Harleian Miscellany" in A Catalogue of Proclamations, Broadsides, Ballads and Poems. Presented to the Chetham Library, Manchester, by J. O. Halliwell (1851).

For a description of the proposals, see J. D. Fleeman, "Johnsonian Prospectuses and Proposals," in Augustan Studies: Essays in Honor of Irvin Ehrenpreis, ed. Douglas Lane Paley and Timothy Keagan (1985), pp. 222-223.

The proposal is reproduced in the first volume of The Shorter Prose Writings of Samuel Johnson (1992), ed. O M Brack, Jr.

Allen T. Hazen, Samuel Johnson's Prefaces & Dedications (1937), pp. 50-52.

Gwin J. Kolb, "A Note on the Publication of Johnson's 'Proposals for Printing the Harleian Miscellany,'" PBSA, 48 (1954), 196-198. This variant occurs in (A) at 35b. Other variants are: Accidents] Accident (5a); but was done] but what was done (1b); these] those (38b). The first printing of the proposals is in two columns; the variants are given by line number with "a" the left column and "b" the right.

The tenth number of the Harleian Miscellany should have been published in late May 1744; this wrapper could not have appeared earlier than that date. James's Medicinal Dictionary was published from 4 February 1742 through 17 August 1745. See R. M. Wiles, Serial Publication in England Before 1750 (1957), 331, 339.

Smith's Memoirs of Wool was published in parts from 16 January 1744 into 1745.

Fleeman, p. 223. In the process of moving the John Johnson Collection to the New Bodleian Library and recataloguing it, the wrapper has been lost. We are grateful to Colin Harris and Julie Ann Wilson for their assistance.