A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

London: W. Strahan and T. Cadwell, 1775. First Edition, First State. Very good +. 8vo, 8 3/8 x 5 1/4 (212 x 132 mm); Title, 284 pp, 1 leaf (errata with 11 items on 12 lines). Printed on laid paper, some foxing and offset. Later binding in crushed light tan morocco with gilt fillets, raised bands, gilt flower motif in compartments, and labels in red and green morocco.
[Courtney & Smith, pp. 117 ff.; Clifford, pp. 29 ff.; ESTC T84319]. A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775) is a travel narrative by Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) about an eighty-three-day journey through Scotland, in particular the islands of the Hebrides, in the late summer and autumn of 1773. The sixty-three-year-old Johnson was accompanied by his thirty-two-year-old friend of many years James Boswell, who was also keeping a record of the trip, published in 1785 as A Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. Johnson and Boswell toured the Highlands and islands by carriage, on horseback and by boat, planning the stages of their journey to stay at the houses of the local gentry. This part of Scotland in 1773 was a romantic place. Johnson came to Scotland to see the primitive and wild, but Scotland by 1773 was already changing quickly, and he feared they had come "too late", but they did see some of the things they sought out. Johnson records and comments on many things about Scottish life, including the happiness and health of the people, antiquities, the economy, orchards and trees, whisky, dress, architecture, religion, language, and education.
The First Edition, numbering 2,000 copies, can be divided into two states. During the course of printing, the work was stopped to alter the paging at U4 from 226 to 296, effectively dividing the first edition into two separate states. Our copy bears the erroneous page number on verso of U4, at page 296.