The Life of Samuel Johnson

No book-club edition exists for a 1791 quarto. Documented reprint tells: (1) the second (1793) and later London editions, and above all Edmund Malone's revised editions from the third onward — these are octavo or smaller, in three or more volumes, and carry Malone's name; (2) the Boston 1807 first American, three octavo volumes, set from the fifth London edition and containing an index (the 1791 quarto has none); (3) the great 19th-century editorial recensions — Croker's and George Birkbeck Hill's — sold in multi-volume sets under Boswell's name but heavily annotated by later editors; (4) Everyman's Library, Oxford Standard Authors, Modern Library and Heritage Press/Limited Editions Club reprints, identifiable by publisher's cloth, modern paper and a 20th-century copyright notice. If the book is not a two-volume QUARTO with the 1791 Baldwin/Dilly imprint, it is not the first edition — and volume count alone (two vs. three or more) settles most donor triage on sight.