Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets. By Samuel Johnson. London: Printed by J. Nichols; For C. Bathurst, J. Buckland, W. Strahan, J. Rivington and Sons... MDCCLXXIX (1779) - MDCCLXXXI (1781).
FIRST EDITION of Samuel Johnson's famous 10 volume set of Prefaces, here lacking volume eight and thus containing nine of the ten volumes. At first the prefaces were only made available to subscribers of the full set of poets and as such are scarcely encountered separate from the full set which followed in 1779-1780 with 56 volumes of works and a 2 volume index.
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Size: 97 x 154 mm (approx., each)
Condition:
Spines rubbed and scuffed with inscribed numbers to bottoms of spines. All tooled labels present with minor loss to some volumes. Most boards attached with wear to joints and hinges, some starting or cracked. Front boards of volumes one, two, three, and ten detached. Detached front boars of volumes one, two, and three are attached to the preliminaries and title pages. Preliminary in volume ten detached. Boards with minor scuffing, rubbing, and sporadic scratches and marks. Shelf and edge wear. Newport Public Library bookplates attached to front pastedown, barcodes attached to preliminaries, and stamps and pencil inscriptions to versos of title pages. Text blocks very clean with very sporadic very minor foxing. Lacking volume eight.
[ESTC T044190; MMSID 9930691163804341; OCLC 3216602].
