This is a two-volume set of The Life of Samuel Johnson, written by James Boswell and published in 1791, and it is a first edition in the first state.
The title page reads The Life Of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., Comprehending An account
of the Studies And Numerous Works, In Chronological Order; A Series Of His Epistolary Correspondence And Conversations With Many Eminent Persons; And Various Original Pieces Of His Composition, Never Before Published. The Whole Exhibiting A View Of Literature And Literary Men In Great Britain For Near Half A Century, During Which He Flourished. In Two Volumes. By James Boswell, Esq. London: Printed By Henry Baldwin, For Charles Dilly, In The Poultry, MDCCXCI. [1791]
Volume I has a red label, gilt lettering, gilt decorations, and six gilt-ruled compartments on the spines, a fancy gilt border on speckled calf boards, blank endpapers, with the bookplate of Sir John C. Hobhouse Bt. on the front paste-down of each volume. and a frontis portrait of Samuel Johnson done by James Heath after a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds. After the title page, there’s a three-page dedication to Joshua Reynolds, an advertisement by Boswell thanking people for helping write the book, fifteen pages of an Alphabetical Table of Contents, then a leaf with Corrections for both volumes.
Volume I has 516 pages of text and the second volume has 588 pages of text, and all the uncorrected errors are present in both volumes to make this a first edition, first issue set. The first volume has the all-important “gve” misprint on line 10 of page 135, and this is required to be a first issue; “gve” is the earlier state, while later states were corrected to read “give”, and only 1750 copies with “gve” were ever printed in the first print run.
The two plates in both volumes are present, as called for - the Round Robin plate on page 92 of Volume I and the facsimiles of Johnson’s handwriting on page 588 of the second volume.
All the mistakes described on the Corrections And Additions page in Volume I are present and uncorrected here; there are a total of twenty-four uncorrected mistakes in the two volumes that need to be present to make this a first issue - thirteen in the first volume and eleven in the second volume - and they are all uncorrected and present here.
Several page numbers were misnumbered and these uncorrected mistakes are all here - pages 229, 408, 497, 504, and the last three leaves of Volume II are all mispaginated, as called for.
All of these details are present and make this set a first edition in the first state.
Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), often called Dr. Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer, and The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography calls him "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He also squabbled with Lord Chesterfield over publicity for a project that was near and dear to Dr. Johnson’s heart - his writing A Dictionary of the English Language - and that squabble is detailed in the books about Lord Chesterfield’s Letters To His Son in the auction here.
Boswell (1740 - 1795) was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer who is best known for his biography of his friend and writer Samuel Johnson, which is commonly said to be the greatest biography written in the English language.
John Cam Hobhouse (1786 - 1869), whose name is on the booklplates, was an English politician also known as Baron Brighton and good friends with Lord Byron when they attended Cambridge together, and after Byron died, Hobhouse read the will and took care of the funeral arrangements for Byron.
He also had a sympathy for Napoleon which caused a stir after Hobhouse wrote a pamphlet speaking out against the governments in both England and France, and the French translation was seized and the translator and printer were imprisoned in France for the contents of the pamphlet.
The two Johnson books are 4 to. and measure 11 1/4 x 9 in. wide, the hinges are tight and secure, there are wide margins, and there are light scuffs on the covers, light wear at the tips and on the edges of Volume II, and light foxing in the second volume.
There’s also an old ink note from a quill pen and a couple of pencilled notes dating from 1843 in the margins of the second volume - they seem to be related to the uncorrected mistakes in Volume II - and there’s a short poesy pencilled in on page 345 of the second volume, and they don’t detract from the texts, but seem to add history to the books.
The Life of Samuel Johnson was one of the greatest biographies in English literature, and a must-have for a serious collector of British biographies in the first state of the first edition.