The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson

Bound in contemporary sprinkled calf, smooth spine, gilt in compartments with urn tools and red morocco label.[i] In very good condition. The front hinge for the top board has cracked, but the hinge itself continues to hold very firmly. The boards show little to moderate wear at the edges and corners.

The volume is in excellent condition internally, with clean pages, clear print and ample margins throughout. Closed tear to signature 2G1 extending through headline into text, bookplate of William Scott Kerr of Chatto laid in, front pastedown partially abraded, The Half-title is present.

Please take the time necessary to review the slideshow on our website in order to gain a better understanding of the content and condition of the volume.

[i] “From the 1760’s onward smooth spines became increasingly common at all ends of the market, and that by the 1780’s and 1790’s they had become the norm. Such spines were normally divided up using fillets or rolls to create a compartment effect. The tooled spines of this period are most instantly datable from their late-eighteenth-century neo-classical tool designs – realistic looking foliage, urns and oval shaped tools. Pearson, English Bookbinding Styles, Pg.104

First published in 1785. “Though the Life is a vaster and richer piece of work, no one will maintain that it displays Boswell’s unique gift for biography better than the Tour. Indeed, most lovers of Boswell will agree that the Tour as a whole, is more consistently good than the Life; that is, that nowhere in the Life could one find so many consecutive first-class pages as those that compose this book” (Pottle). This work is almost the same as the actual journal that was kept in 1773. When Johnson’s death made it possible for Boswell to publish the manuscript, he only added an introduction and a conclusion before giving it to the printer.