Eighteenth-Century British Magazine Essayists. An Annotated Initial Wording Index

This multi-volume series will help scholars and students of the period find their way quickly to the source of unacknowledged or incompetently ascribed reprintings of literary prose. The volumes will assist one in particular to trace reprintings in the periodicals and anthologies published outside of Great Britain. There are copious entries for passages other than the first line of a text, necessitated where a reprinting had edited out original first lines or significantly altered them; as plagiarism was customary, the many disguises of a text can only be captured by providing some of the first wording for key thematic statements. The Index is based on the following texts, supplemented by selective indexing of literary prose in those magazines for which abbreviations have been assigned below, with, in particular quite thorough indexing of the principal essay serials and several magazines of the 1745-85 periods, including The Museum, Rambler, Covent-Garden Journal, The Student, Inspector, Adventurer, Midwife, Craftsman, Gray’s-Inn Journal, Connoisseur, World, Prater, Old Maid, Universal Visiter, Idler, Centinel, and Beauties of the Magazines. Indexing for the Universal Magazine, London Magazine, and other long-run periodical is done with an emphasis on literary and moral essays with broad contemporary or modern interest.

Subscribers to the series will receive each volume for the subscription price of $59.95/£39.95. Individual volumes will be priced on page count.