61. Poems, | Chiefly In The | Scottish Dialect, | By | Robert Burns. | [Quotation] Kilmarnock: | Printed By John Wilson. | M,DCC,LXXXVI.
One of Burns's warmest friends, Gavin Hamilton, advised him to publish his poems in order to get enough money to emigrate to Jamaica, where it was hoped he would escape from the complications incident upon his love affair with Jean Armour. In the preface Burns tells us that none of the poems was written with a view to publication, but as a counterpoise to the troubles of the world.
The Proposals For Publishing By Subscription, Scottish Poems, By Robert Burns, only one copy of which is known, appeared in 1786, and ran as follows: "The Work to be elegantly printed, in one volume octavo. Price, stitched, Three Shillings. As the Author has not the most distant mercenary view in publishing, as soon as so many subscribers appear as will defray the necessary expense, the work will be sent to Press." A stanza of a poem by Alan Ramsay was followed by the agreement: "We undersubscribers engage to take the above-mentioned work on the conditions specified." The book went to press in June, and appeared the last day of July. Six hundred and twelve copies were printed; three hundred and fifty were taken by the author's friends; and, by August 28, all but thirteen had been sold. Burns cleared about twenty pounds.
In October a new edition of a thousand copies was suggested by Burns, but the printer refused to proceed unless the author would advance twenty-seven pounds, the price of the paper, "But this, you know," says the luckless poet to Robert Aiken, "is out of my power; so farewell hopes of a second edition till I grow richer! an epocha, which, I think, will arrive at the payment of the British National Debt."
Unlike Messrs. Dunlop and Wilson of Glasgow, to whom Burns is said, without much authority, to have first offered the poem, Wilson, the printer of the little volume, was not a great or leading publisher; but he succeeded in making a volume that is very charming in appearance, and not without reminders of the French press-work of the period.
A copy of this book sold at the auction of the library of Mr. A. C. Lamb of Dundee, in February, 1898, for the sum of five hundred and seventy-two pounds, five shillings—"the most amazing price ever realized for a modern book."
Octavo.
Collation: 240 pp.