This is Pope's first avowed edition of his letters. A half-title, "The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope in Prose," precedes the title-page.
The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope, in Prose. Vol. ii. London: Printed for J. and P. Knapton, C. Bathurst, and R. Dodsley, 1741. 4to and folio.
The half-title is more precise: "The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope, in Prose. Vol. ii. Containing the rest of his Letters, with the Memoirs of Scriblerus, never before printed; and other Tracts written either singly, or in conjunction with his friends. Now first collected together." The letters are the Swift correspondence, and they are in a different type from the rest of the book. The numbers of the pages are very irregular, and show that the contents and arrangement of the volume had been greatly altered from some previous impression. The folio copies of the two volumes of poetry, and the two of prose, are merely the quarto text portioned out into longer pages, without a single leaf being reprinted. The trifling variations from the quartos were introduced when the matter was put into the folio size.
The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq.; vol. i. with explanatory Notes and Additions never before printed. London: Printed for B. Lintot, 1736. Small 8vo.
This is the first volume of an edition which extended to nine volumes, and which from the want of uniformity in the title-pages, the dates, and names of the publishers appears to consist of odd volumes. The copyright of Pope's works belonged to different proprietors, and they at last agreed to print their respective shares in small octavo, that the several parts united might form a complete set. Each proprietor commenced printing his particular section of the octavos when the previous sizes he had on hand were sold, and thus it happened that the second volume of the edition came out in 1735 before the first, which was published in 1736. The series was not finished till 1742, when the fourth book of the Dunciad was added to the Poems, and the Swift Correspondence to the Letters. Some of the volumes were reprinted, and the later editions occasionally differ slightly from their predecessors. The Poems and Letters of Pope are more complete in the octavos than in the quartos, but the octavos, on the other hand, omit all the prose works except the Letters, and the Memoirs of Scriblerus, and octavos and quartos combined are imperfect in comparison with the editions which have been published since Pope's death.