![[BOSWELL, James (1740-1795)]. Ode by Dr. Samuel Johnson to Mrs. Thrale upon their Supposed Approaching Nuptials. London: printed for R. Faulder, 1784 [1788].](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2004/CKS/2004_CKS_06973_0043_000(073650).jpg?w=1)
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[BOSWELL, James (1740-1795)]. Ode by Dr. Samuel Johnson to Mrs. Thrale upon their Supposed Approaching Nuptials. London: printed for R. Faulder, 1784 [1788].
4° (162 x 204mm). Loose sheets. (First leaf a little creased at upper margin, final 2 leaves slightly browned.) Unbound as issued in two quires, brown cloth portfolio. Provenance: William Marchbank (bookplate).
A FINE UNCUT AND UNOPENED COPY OF THE FIRST EDITION, deliberately misdated 1784. The fact that the preface quotes extensively from Mrs. Piozzi's edition of Johnson's Letters, which appeared early in 1788, is one indication that the date must be false; it was excerpted among imitations of Johnson's style in the Life of Johnson, following November 1784, Boswell calling it 'a poem not without characteristical merit.' However, its composition actually dates from an evening at Sir Joshua Reynolds's on 12 April 1781, when Boswell's journal tersely records: 'Song made.' This was just eight days after Henry Thrale's death on 4 April 1781, and the day after his burial. The ribald epithalamium has the effect of showing, in a quite startling manner, that Johnson's biographer was not always reverential towards his subject. Reed and Pottle suggest that it was intended to be sung, and to have a comical rather than a bawdy effect. They also point out that Boswell 'was by no means the only one among Johnson's close friends who made Johnson matter for comedy in ways which they would have been most unwilling for Johnson to know about .... Nobody among Johnson's close friends ever seems to have scolded Boswell for writing the Ode or even to have disapproved of it. It was composed stanza by stanza at Reynolds's, one suspects with Reynolds's encouragement and applause' (Laird of Auchinleck 1778-1782, 1993, p. 318). However, when he showed or sang the Ode to Wilkes, the latter teased him by threatening to tell Johnson about it. After publication, Boswell must have taken back the unsold sheets from Faulder which emerged from Auchinleck, much 'injured by dirt and damp,' during a sale in 1825. Pottle 72; Rothschild 460.
4° (162 x 204mm). Loose sheets. (First leaf a little creased at upper margin, final 2 leaves slightly browned.) Unbound as issued in two quires, brown cloth portfolio. Provenance: William Marchbank (bookplate).
A FINE UNCUT AND UNOPENED COPY OF THE FIRST EDITION, deliberately misdated 1784. The fact that the preface quotes extensively from Mrs. Piozzi's edition of Johnson's Letters, which appeared early in 1788, is one indication that the date must be false; it was excerpted among imitations of Johnson's style in the Life of Johnson, following November 1784, Boswell calling it 'a poem not without characteristical merit.' However, its composition actually dates from an evening at Sir Joshua Reynolds's on 12 April 1781, when Boswell's journal tersely records: 'Song made.' This was just eight days after Henry Thrale's death on 4 April 1781, and the day after his burial. The ribald epithalamium has the effect of showing, in a quite startling manner, that Johnson's biographer was not always reverential towards his subject. Reed and Pottle suggest that it was intended to be sung, and to have a comical rather than a bawdy effect. They also point out that Boswell 'was by no means the only one among Johnson's close friends who made Johnson matter for comedy in ways which they would have been most unwilling for Johnson to know about .... Nobody among Johnson's close friends ever seems to have scolded Boswell for writing the Ode or even to have disapproved of it. It was composed stanza by stanza at Reynolds's, one suspects with Reynolds's encouragement and applause' (Laird of Auchinleck 1778-1782, 1993, p. 318). However, when he showed or sang the Ode to Wilkes, the latter teased him by threatening to tell Johnson about it. After publication, Boswell must have taken back the unsold sheets from Faulder which emerged from Auchinleck, much 'injured by dirt and damp,' during a sale in 1825. Pottle 72; Rothschild 460.
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