The Works of Samuel Johnson
JOHNSON, Samuel
COMPLETE EXTENDED SET IN CONTEMPORARY FULL CALF
Published: Talboys & Wheeler and W. Pickering Oxford, 1825
Stock code: 7819
Price: £670.00
11 vols., 8vo., with engraved armorial vignette on titles; attractively and strongly bound in contemporary full tan calf, sides with gilt frame border, backs with five raised bands, second and third compartments with red and black leather labels lettered in gilt, all other compartments richly ruled and tooled in gilt, doublures tooled in blind, all edges marbled, one volume neatly rebacked with old backstrip laid down, six labels (three red and three black) missing (but residual lettering wholly legible in blind), backstrips rather scuffed and age-worn (particularly on sixth volume), joints mildly rubbed (but all bindings entirely sound), else a handsome, internally crisp and spotless extended set in elaborate period binding.
This set includes all half-titles, but was bound without the engraved portrait of Johnson often present in first or third volumes. Published in the series 'Oxford English Classics', this edition was supervised by Francis Pearson Walesby (1798-1858), Fellow of Lincoln College and later Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. The set was originally to comprise nine volumes (see titles); the tenth and eleventh volumes containing the 'Debates' were issued as supplements. Volume one contains Murphy's 'Essay', first published separately in 1792. In volume nine, 'Journey' retains the dates of August 13 ('Lough Ness') and September 20 ('Skye'), but corrects the error about the Macleods. Courtney & Nichol Smith pp.166-7; CBEL II, p.614