I think I may have mentioned that it is book sale season around here. Last night I went to a sale and passed a few happy hours hunting through the stacks. As I was preparing to leave, I passed the section devoted to “Sets”, and what to my wondering eyes should appear?
(Click to enlarge.)
This is the 1929 New Cambridge Edition. It is a limited edition; only 500 sets were printed, this set being number 252. The set includes The Lives of the Poets, The Lives of Eminent Persons (including his biography of my academic ancestor Hermann Boerhaave), Rasselas, essays from The Idler and The Rambler, his Preface to Shakespeare and Preface to the English Dictionary, as well as Boswell’s Tour of the Hebrides, various letters, sermons, and prayers, and whatever else might delight the heart of an admirer of Dr. Johnson.
I’m over the moon with happiness.
October 25, 2008 at 11:43 pm
What a find! I’m green with envy.
October 27, 2008 at 11:24 am
My sentiments exactly.
October 30, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Sir, a most magnificent find. If you have not read Rasselas, I exhort you to do it at once: almost an equal to Gulliver’s Travels, even though the Doctor would frown at that comparison.
October 30, 2008 at 10:35 pm
I am trying to resist that feeling one has upon discovering oneself to be the object of another’s envy. I wish you all could have a set just like this one.
Adam, I have not read Rasselas, but upon your recommendation I will advance it in my reading queue. (Also: Welcome back!)