BOSWELL, JAMES.

London, H. Baldwin, 1785. 8vo. III-VII,(1),524,(1) pp. Worn and restored contemporary tree calf, spine ruled in gilt with later black morocco label lettered in gilt. Spine cracked and worn with head and tail missing, both joints cracked, upper cover loose together with first gathering, signs of worming along rear joint, endpapers renewed. Faint gilt-embossed initials visible at tail of spine. Some spotting and staining, e.g. from the bottom margin of title-page to p. 16 and at upper margin of pp. 430-440. Paper loss at outer margin of p. 89 and at lower outer corner of p. 319. Faint dampstaining to lower gutter on pp. 187-231. Small tear affecting upper margin of p. 369. With the signature of Elizabeth Dauberry dated 1804, and the bookplates of Carl Doge Beth Heather Mansfield and Gunnar Brusewitz. Lacking the half-title!

Cox A reference guide to the literature of travel III:31. Pottle The literary career of James Boswell 57. The first edition, second state as described by Pottle, of Boswell’s account of his three-month trek through the highlands and islands with Samuel Johnson in 1773. A second revised edition was printed the same year. Boswell’s account ”has the chatty informality of a ’rough’ guide: its focus is on Johnson, as it describes his charged encounters with the native population, whether humble cottagers or important personages like Lord Monboddo and Boswell’s formidable father Lord Auchinleck […]. The tour […] deepened the friendship between the pair, and increased Johnson’s respect for and confidence in Boswell as a future biographer” (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). Johnson had published his own account, very different in tone, in ”A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland” (1775). The final leaf advertises Boswell’s Life of Johnson as ”Preparing for the press, in one volume quarto”.