Walladmor

2 vols. in 8vo. pp. xxxii, 247; pp. [6], 331, [1]. Signatures: π12 b8 B-Q8 R4; A4 B-U8 X4. Original drab boards in a phase box. Printed worn spine labels; spines cracked and chipped at head and foot; uncut.

First and only edition of the scarce (satirical) translation by De Quincey of the imitiation/forgery of a Walter Scott novel, passed off as a translation of Scott by ‘Willibald Alexis,’ a pseudonym of Georg Wilhelm Häring, one of Scott’s regular German translators (see Bib# 4103022/Fr# 1384 in this collection for the original “translation”). Häring had disingenuously dedicated the novel to Scott himself, acknowledging that it was ‘uncommon ... that a translator should dedicate his translation to the author of the original work’, and De Quincey, who clearly relished this bit of light-hearted hackwork (he had already ridiculed ‘Moredun’ in ‘The London Magazine’ for October 1824), added his own ironic dedication ‘To the German “translator” of Walladmor’, in which the Opium Eater apologized, tongue-in-cheek, for altering the plot somewhat, and correcting a foreigner’s imperfect command of British chronology and geography: ‘It did strike me,’ he solemnly observed, ‘that the case of a man’s swimming on his back from Bristol to the Isle of Anglesea was more than the most indulent public would bear.’ On a more serious note, he wonders what a German literary figure would think ‘if one of these days you were to receive a large parcel by the “post-wagen” containing Posthumous Works of Mr. Kant. I won’t swear but I shall make up such a parcel myself: and if I should, I bet you any thing you choose that I hoax the great Bavarian professor [he notes ‘Mr. Schelling, for whom I profess the very highest respect’] with a treatise on the “Categorical Imperative,” and “The last words of Mr. Kant on Transcendental Apperception.” And he challenges Häring to translate this revised version of Walladmor back into German, promising to return the favor again, and so on and on, ad inf. See the account in J.A. Farrer, Literary forgeries. London and New York, 1907, pp. 268-69, and W.B. Todd and A. Bowden, Sir Walter Scott: A Bibliographical History, 1796–1832. New Castle, Del., 1998, no. 546r.

Click here to view the Johns Hopkins University catalog record.