The Lounger. A Periodical Paper, published at Edinburgh in the Years 1785 and 1786.
Edinburgh: printed for William Creech, February 5, 1785-January 6, 1787.
Price: $1,000.00
About the item
First edition of all issues except issues 1 & 2 (third ed), and issues 3-5 & 7 (second edition). With The Lounger Extraordinary; or, Masquerade Monitor bound between issues 56 and 57. Folio (317 x 190 mm). Contemporary marbled boards backed with modern calf. Scattered minor soiling, boards rubbed, a clean copy. ESTC P1411. Provenance: J Whyte (contemporary ownership inscription).
Item #308080
Complete run of all 101 issues published. The Lounger and an earlier journal edited by Mackenzie, The Mirror (1779-80), were "the first Scottish weeklies of their kind. Mackenzie contributed most of the essays and focused on life and society, advocating a way of life based on natural sentiment and harmony. The balance between egotistic and altruistic motives was very much a tenet of the Scottish Enlightenment" (ODNB). Mackenzie (1745-1831), whom Sir Walter Scott called the 'Northern Addison', is perhaps best known for his novel The Man of Feeling (1771); he contributed 57 of the essays in The Lounger. This copy includes a contemporary (or near) manuscript "Key to the Lounger," 5 pp, providing the names of contributors for each issue; the names of contributors (or speculations thereon) have also been inked in a contemporary hand, presumably Whyte's, at the end of many issues. Evidently a subscriber's copy; at the end of the final issue is printed a notice of the publication in volumes of The Lounger, declaring that subscribers who have preserved their numbers will be given a title page gratis.
