The Idler

London: Printed for J. Newbery, 1761. Good-. IMPORTANT NOTE: This book, by Samuel Johnson, is Volume 2 only of a 2 Volume Set Volume 1 is missing
Samuel Johnson, often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English author, poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer He was a devout Anglican and committed Tory, and has been described as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history"(Courtesy Wikipedia)

The Idler was a series of 103 essays, all but twelve of them by Samuel Johnson, published in the London weekly the Universal Chronicle between 1758 and 1760 It is likely that the Chronicle was published for the sole purpose of including The Idler, since it had produced only one issue before the series began, and ceased publication when it finished The authors besides Johnson were Thomas Warton, Bennet Langton, and Joshua Reynolds Johnson's biographer, James Boswell, recalled that Johnson wrote some of the essays in The Idler "as hastily as an ordinary letter" He said that once while visiting Oxford, Johnson composed an essay due for publication the next day in the half-hour before the last post was collected
The essays were so popular that other publications began reprinting them without permission, prompting Johnson to insert a notice in the Chronicle threatening to do the same to his competitors' material and give the profits to London's prostitutes
When The Idler appeared in book form, one of Johnson's essays, The Vulture, was omitted, apparently because its anti-war satire was felt to be seditious Johnson replaced it with an essay on the imprisonment of debtors (Courtesy Wikipedia)

The book has moderate to significant signs of age and wear
The front cover board of the volume and first endpaper are present but detached and separated The back cover board is also beginning to separate from the book



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