Title and Text Variants of a Pamphlet Ascribed to Daniel Defoe

Abstract

In his article of some twenty years ago on the Huntington Library's acquisition of certain items associated with Daniel Defoe, the late Professor J. R. Moore commented with respect to one of them that it might represent an unrecorded earlier version of what had hitherto been considered its first printing.1 On his hypothesis the eight-page quarto entitled THE/Apparent [Gothic] Danger [Gothic]/ OF AN/ INVASION,/ Briefly Represented in a Letter, which is/supposed to be writ by my Lord Mel-/ford, to his Brother the Earl of Perth;/ now Commented on, and as that was, / sent to the King and Parliament. / [rule 100 mm] / Presented to a Member of Parliament. / [rule 110 mm] / LONDON: / Printed in the Year MDCCI.2 would replace Item 34 of his Checklist of the Writings of Daniel Defoe3 as the original form of the tract's title page. Thereafter, having claimed for the new variant A some textual superiority over the other, Professor Moore went on to speculate that it might have been printed for presentation to [King] William and to members of Parliament so that its title page contained no reference to printer and bookseller, while the other offered by Mrs. Baldwin for public sale.4 In making these assertions, Professor Moore was obviously setting the four-page British Library copy of the Kentish Gentleman's Apparent Danger-or perhaps Indiana University's identical Lilly Collection specimen here designated B-against the Huntington Library's variant, mentioned above, for the two former contain the errors that he complains of in footnote 24 of his article. What he did not record was the increasing number of typographical mistakes on the variant's later pages, indicative of carelessness or haste and certainly most unlikely to be present in a piece of writing designed for presentation to king and Parliament: mitilia and malitia for militia in the course of a single paragraph, considerale for considerable, mysterys instead of the