A Note on Buckeridge's 1740 Edition of Roxana

SEAGER, NP

Abstract

IN HIS unpublished doctoral dissertation on the eighteenth-century continuations of Daniel Defoe’s Roxana, Spiro Peterson mentions two editions from 1740.1 One is the edition published by Elizabeth Applebee with its spurious continuation, which was issued in 37 “numbers” and is the first known continuation of the novel beyond the point where Defoe famously left off.2 The other was printed by George Buckeridge; according to Peterson, it omits the preface but retains the famous original frontispiece (whereas Applebee’s edition has a new frontispiece, depicting Roxana with her son by the German prince). Buckeridge’s is an edition in 74 parts, running to 589 pages.3 Unlike Applebee’s edition it does end like the 1724 original with Roxana bewailing her inability to repent after her apparent complicity in her daughter’s murder. Both 1740 editions retain the long title of the original – it was the 1742 edition that first foregrounded the heroine’s sobriquet in the title.4 Buckeridge’s edition is absent from the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC), though it is mentioned in John Mullan’s textual history and in P.N. Furbank and W.R. Owens’s list of editions, both of which give information offered by Peterson.5 The earliest reference I have found to Buckeridge’s edition comes in a catalogue of Defoe’s writings published in the early nineteenth century.6 However, based on current catalogues listings, anyone researching Defoe might think that no copies have survived.

In fact, the only known copy of Buckeridge’s edition is in the Newberry Library of the University of Chicago. However, this is rather easy to miss. ESTC erroneously lists four extant bound copies of the 1740 Applebee edition: in the British Library, the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library (UCLA), Beneicke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library (Yale), and the Newberry Library. The first three have been verified (and, indeed, the British Library’s copy is on Eighteenth-Century Collections Online), but the Newberry copy turns out to be the Buckeridge edition, not the Applebee. ESTC, then, lacks the Buckeridge edition and gives one location for the Applebee edition that is incorrect.7 At the time I write, the Newberry Library’s catalogue similarly has an entry for the Applebee edition that should be for the Buckeridge one.8 The clarification provided by this note should help to correct two authoritative online resources, ESTC and the Newberry Library catalogue. It should also remind the reader, in this the first issue of Digital Defoe, that some digitized information on Defoe requires verification.9

Citation

SEAGER, N. (2009). A Note on Buckeridge's 1740 Edition of Roxana. Digital Defoe, 1(1), 103--104

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: 2009
• Deposit Date: Jul 6, 2023
• Journal: Digital Defoe
• Electronic ISSN: 1948-1802
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 1
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 103--104
• Publisher URL: https://english.illinoisstate.edu/digitaldefoe/archive/spring09/notes/index.shtml
• Related Public URLs: http://english.illinoisstate.edu/digitaldefoe/notes/seager.pdf