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“20. History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Abdication of James II. By David Hume. 6 vols, 12mo., pp. 470. New York: Harper & Brothers,” The Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review, vol. 22, no. 6 (1 June 1850), p. 702.
Anonymous
The Merchant’s Magazine was published by Freeman Hunt in New York. It pitched Harper & Brothers’s new edition of Hume’s History as good value for its readers, noting in particular the value-added scholarly apparatus. Interestingly, to this day no edition of the History has been published with a bibliography. For an interim report on an ongoing endeavour to produce one, see Roger L. Emerson and Mark G. Spencer, “A Bibliography for Hume’s History of England: A Preliminary View,” Hume Studies, vol. 40, no. 1 (2014 [published in 2016]), pp. 53–71.
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This edition of Hume’s history is contained in six volumes, which are a very convenient size for use; the type is clear, large, legible, and the paper good. The whole is bound is [sic] cloth, and offered to the public at the extremely low price of forty cents a volume, or two dollars and forty cents for the work. If we consider the high character of this history, the long period during which it has been a standard work in the English language, and the fullness and richness of its contents, we doubt if a cheaper book has ever been issued from the press in this country. It embraces, also, the appendix, the notes, and the authorities citied in former editions, and contains the author’s last corrections and improvements, with a short account of his life, written by himself.