Library of English Classics

BOSWELL

The Life of

Samuel Johnson, LL.D.

By James Boswell, Esq.

IN THREE VOLS.-VOL. I.

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1922

THIS edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson is reprinted from that prepared by Mr. Mowbray Morris for the Messrs. Macmillan's "Globe " series in 1893. As the plan of the present series excludes critical estimates, only the following paragraphs, dealing with the bibliography of the book, are reproduced from Mr. Morris's introduction. A. W. P.

BOSWELL'S Life of Johnson was published on May 16th, 1791, in two volumes quarto. A supplementary volume was added in 1794, followed almost immediately by a second edition in three volumes octavo, in which, however, the fresh materials, instead of being incorporated in the text, were clumsily placed at the beginning and end of the book. Boswell was engaged in arranging these materials for a third edition when he died on May 19th, 1795. The work was then taken up by Malone, who had watched and helped its progress from the first, and published in four volumes octavo in 1799. The author's plan, so far as he had lived to indicate it, was carefully followed. The fresh materials were distributed throughout