The idler / by the author of The rambler ; with additional essays. In two volumes. The sixth edition. Volume First

[Johnson, Samuel]. The idler / by the author of The rambler ; with additional essays. In two volumes. The sixth edition. Volume First. London: printed for J. Hodges, W. Millar, R. Tonson, T. French, J. Ottridge, G. Wade and J. Wren, 1790. Hardback, Good. Contemporary full calf, bumped to corners, with dents and marks, superficial crack lines along the spine. Spine in six panels with gilt bands. Red text box to second panel with gilt lettering; gilt no. '1' encircled to fourth panel. Binding strong and tight. Contemporary ownership signature to ffep. Old watermark to endpapers. Frontispiece b/w portrait of Johnson. 221pp. Occasional smudge and foxing spot, otherwise contents clean and bright. 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. 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. 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. RightWayUp Books aims to provide accurate and detailed descriptions. All images are of the actual book for sale - no stock images are ever used. Thank you for looking at this listing.…