Price: £4,500
Subject: Literature
Published Date: 1749
Stock Number: 49946
(Your basket is currently empty)Description: FIRST EDITION, 3 wood engraved tail-pieces, errata leaf present in vol. i (see note), gathering E in vol. i misbound with pp. 81-88 between 92 and 93, final blanks present in vols. i and iii, occasional slight browning, and the odd minor stain here and there, textblock in 2 vols. cracked, with corresponding cracks in spine of binding, and a similar tendency in all vols., pp. lxii, [i, Errata], 214, [2, blank]; [i], 324; [i], 324; [i], 370 plus final blank leaf; [i], 312; [i], 294; [i], 304, 12mo, contemporary (publisher's) sprinkled calf, new red lettering pieces, joints cracked, lower cover of vol. I detached, hinge of vol. vi invisibly reinforced, various bookplates and inscriptions of the Farquhars of Gilmilnescroft (Ayrshire), sound
Publication Details: Printed for A. Millar. 1749
Notes: Fielding's masterpiece, widely regarded as the greatest English novel of the eighteenth century.The question of cancelled leaves in this novel has exercised bibliographers for decades, but Hugh Amory's article in Harvard Library Bulletin (Volume 25, 1977) confirms that the cancellans usually number twenty-four (twelve single leaves plus the whole of signature O in volume three). The numerous errors which occurred in the text are a result of its hasty printing; demand for the novel forced publisher and author into print before they were properly ready. The fact that volume six, which contains ...more
Bibliography: (Cross Vol.2, pp.117-22 and Vol.3, pp. 316-17: Jensen. Proposals for a Definitive Edition of Fielding's Tom Jones. The Library, 4th Ser., Vol.XVIII, p.314 et seq.: Rothschild 850)
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