The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell. In two volumes, published by Henry Baldwin for Charles Dilly in London, 1791, 4to.
-------------------
FIRST EDITION OF JAMES BOSWELL'S MAGNUM OPUS; THE GREATEST BIOGRAPHY EVER WRITTEN, IN BEAUTIFUL CONDITION.
-------------------
"The Life of Johnson was no single book miraculously produced by an inexperienced author. It was the crowning achievement of an artist who for more than twenty-five years had been deliberately disciplining himself for such a task" (Pottle, p.xxi).
The first edition was issued in 1,750 copies on the 16th of May 1791 and was fast to sell out and was an immediate commercial success, with new editions following quickly. It paved the way for the modern biography and is undoubtedly the most significant biography ever published in the genre.
Even the work's most famous critic, Thomas Macaulay, said of it that "The Life of Samuel Johnson is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second. He has distanced all his competitors so decidedly that it is not worth while to place them."
A truly excellent example, reading "give" spelled correctly on pp.135 line 10 of volume one and bibliographically following the Forum Auctions example as above.
-------------------
Size: 22.5 x 27.5 cm (approx., each)
Condition:
Spines and corners expertly rebacked and thus showing very attractively on the shelf, retaining earlier tooled red morocco labels, with the half calf binding over similarly earlier marbled boards. Very light rubbing across the joints but with all boards securely attached, the bindings secure and without shelf lean. Some shelf and edge wear. Some light staining to spines. Gilt bright. Boards scuffed with some edge dulling. Top page edges dulled as typical with others very good. Without any attached bookplates, though with a very small scored out ink ownership inscription to the head of the title pages of both volumes. Text blocks are very clean, some very mild foxing, else internally excellent - a remarkably clean copy. Endpapers contemporary with the watermark of Abbey Mills Greenfield and therefore between 1821 and 1854. The boards appear to be earlier than this. Complete with the facsimile of Johnson's handwriting leaf, the Round Robin leaf, and the frontispiece in the first volume constituting a total of three plates as called for.
