Note 7 — ADVERTISEMENT
Reading edition
Boswell in the 'Advertisement' to the second edition, dated Dec. 20, 1785, says that 'the whole of the first impression has been sold in a few weeks.' Three editions were published within a year, but the fourth was not issued till 1807. A German translation was published in Lübeck in 1787. I believe that in no language has a translation been published of the Life of Johnson. Johnson was indeed, as Boswell often calls him, 'a trueborn Englishman'—so English that foreigners could neither understand him nor relish his Life.