An Account of Corsica by Boswell, James - 1768

Glasgow: : Printed by Robert and Andrew Foulis for Edward and Charles Dilly in the Poultry, London, 1768. First edition. With all issue points called for by Rothschild. Contemporary sheep. Spine decoratively tooled in gilt in compartments with burgundy morocco gilt lettering label. Expertly rebacked with the original spine laid-down. Front pastedown with early ink signature (partially erased), pencil signature of D. Cecil Gibbs, armorial bookplate of Thomas Havers (with his name crossed out in pencil), penciled note: "J. Joseph's copy," and penciled bookseller's note. Penciled annotations at foot of pages 71 -72. Octavo (205 x 125 mm). Collating xxi, [1, blank], [1, table of contents], [1, blank], 382: bound without the final blank leaf (Aa8) but else complete, including the large folding engraved frontispiece map of Corsica (here in its second state) by Thomas Phinn. A very good copy.

"The first edition was sold out within six weeks, and a new edition (also of 3500 copies) was advertised for 1 April 1768...This second edition supplied the public demand for a year. The third edition was advertised for 1 May 1769, with the announcement that ‘Mr. Boswell's Account of Corsica has been so well received by the Public that two numerous Editions of 3500 Copies have been sold within the Space of a few Months; and the Book is so highly esteemed abroad that it has been translated into the French and Dutch languages, and printed at Amsterdam and Lausanne'...As Boswell proudly recorded later...it was ‘translated into Dutch, German Italian, and twice into French'—all within a year of its publication. Besides this, there were, as listed above, at least three editions printed in Ireland. The Account of Corsica was a book of the hour. Many more copies of it were sold in Boswell's lifetime than of either of his great works in the biography of Johnson, and it achieved abroad a much more remarkable success" (Pottle).

Cox I, pp. 138-139. Gaskell 473. Lowndes I, p. 242. Pottle 24. Rothschild 442-445.