A Lady

A Journey to the Highlands of Scotland. With Occasional Remarks on Dr. Johnson's Tour

London: Fielding and Walker.

First Edition. Hardcover. Near fine. Undated, c. 1776. 4" x 6.25", pp. xvi,163, with engraved title page. Contemporary calf boards with new spine in six compartments. Boards scuffed, internally clean and sound. Part travelogue, part response to Samuel Johnson's A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775), this anonymous work is structured as a series of letters never intended for publication—a common trope that allowed the author to use a more personal and colloquial style than convention dictated for a travel narrative. A pose of amateurism also made it more acceptable for a woman writer to venture into print with what was actually a work of skilled observation (indeed, she admits to having traveled with "pencil in hand" and "noticed several things worthy of being made public, which more laborious travelers ... had neglected, or overlooked") as well as a pointed critique of Johnson, whom she found to be pedantic and judgmental. The book was long credited to novelist Mary Ann Hanway, but recent scholarship has cast doubt on the attribution. ESTC T80850.