Young Sam Johnson

Early in his literary career, Johnson earned most of his income by work for hire for booksellers and publishers. One such example is his association with Thomas Osborne (d. 1767), who in 1741 spent £13,000 to acquire the great library of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford (1661-1724). To recoup this very sizable investment, Osborne hired Johnson and William Oldys (1696-1761) to produce a sale catalogue for the collection with enough scholarly annotation to be a successful publishing project in its own right. Osborne solicited subscriptions to fund the project and this prospectus was circulated as an advertisement. This copy was apparently unsuccessful in that goal as the receipt at the bottom of the title page was never filled out and returned. This is one of a handful of surviving copies of the prospectus. The copy of the Catalogus shown here was a gift from the Grolier Club to Donald Hyde in recognition of his service as President from 1961 to 1965.