(1) [Celebrated Trials: 1825]
Celebrated Trials, / and / Remarkable Cases / of / Criminal Jurisprudence, / from / The Earliest Records / to / The Year 1825. / [Thirteen-line quotation from Burke] / In Six Volumes. / Vol. I. [Vol. II, &c.] / London: / Printed for Knight and Lacey, / Paternoster-Row. / 1825. / Price £3. 12s. in Boards.
Collation:—Demy octavo.
Vol. I. Pp. xiii + v + 550, with nine engraved Plates.
Vol. II. „ vi + 574, with seven engraved Plates.
[P. 574 is misnumbered 140.]
Vol. III. „ vi + 572, with three engraved Plates.
Vol. IV. „ vi + 600, with five engraved Plates.
Vol. V. „ vi + 684, with five engraved Plates.
Vol. VI. „ viii + 576 + an Index of 8 pages, together with six engraved Plates.
Issued in drab paper boards, with white paper back-labels. The leaves measure 8⅝ × 5 inches.
It is evident that no fewer than five different printing houses were employed simultaneously in the production of this work.
The preliminary matter of all six volumes was printed together, and the reverse of each title-page carries at foot the following imprint: “London: / Shackell and Arrowsmith, Johnson’s-Court, Fleet-Street.”
The same firm also worked the whole of the Second Volume, and their imprint is repeated at the foot of p. 574 [misnumbered 140].
Vol. I bears, at the foot of p. 550, the following imprint: “Printed by W. Lewis, 21, Finch-Lane, Cornhill.”
Vol. III bears, at the foot of p. 572, the following imprint: “J. and C. Adlard, Printers, / Bartholomew Close.”
Vols. IV and VI bear, at the foot of pages 600 and 576 respectively, the following imprint: “D. Sidney & Co., Printers / Northumberland-street, Strand.”
Vol. V bears, at the foot of p. 684, the following imprint: “Whiting and Branston, / Beaufort House, Strand.”
Both Dr. Knapp and Mr. Clement Shorter have recorded full particulars of the genesis of the Celebrated Trials. Mr. Shorter devotes a considerable portion of Chapter xi of George Borrow and his Circle to the subject, and furnishes an analysis of the contents of each of the six volumes. Celebrated Trials is, of course, the Newgate Lives and Trials of Lavengro, in which book Borrow contrived to make a considerable amount of entertaining narrative out of his early struggles and failures.
There is a Copy of the First Edition of Celebrated Trials in the Library of the British Museum. The Press-mark is 518.g.6.