Excerpt from Goldsmith's the Traveller and the Deserted Village: Edited, With Introduction and Notes The two poems here annotated passed through many early editions. The Traveller was three times pub lished within a twelvemonth after its first appearance in December, 1764; it was issued for the fifth time in 1768, for the sixth in 1770, and in 1774, the year of Gold smith's death, the ninth edition was given to the world. This last - the text of Mitford and Dobson - I have made the groundwork of the present edition, collating it with the liest modern texts, solely with a view to accu racy ih punctuation and forms of spelling, as about the words of the poem there is now no question. In my notes I have given many readings of the earliest versions (the first, third, and fourth have been accessible to me in the Harvard Library), believing that the revisions of the poet furnish a suggestive study in literary craftsmanship. Of the five editions of The Deserted Village appear ing between May 26 and August 16, 1770, I have chosen the fourth - also the Mitford and Dobson text. In this case, I have taken earlier readings second-hand through recent editors, as I have before me none Of the Oldest texts; but the changes that the lines of The Deserted Village underwent at Goldsmith's hands are not nearly SO numerous and noteworthy as those in The Traveller. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.