ABSTRACT
When the first Book of James Beattie's Minstrel appeared in 1771, it was greeted with immediate and almost universal acclamation. Published simultaneously in Edinburgh and London, the first edition of five hundred copies sold out so rapidly that a second edition of seven hundred had to be published two months later, and five months later a third edition of yet 750 more copies appeared and continued to sell out rapidly. 1 When the poem's second Book appeared in 1774, it too ran through three editions within the year; and the poem continued to be republished, going through almost thirty reprintings by the time of Beattie's death in 1803 and at least fifty-one by the end of the 1820s, making it one of the best-selling poems of its era. 2 As Lady Elizabeth Montagu exclaims in a March 1771 letter before she had met Beattie, summing up the enthusiasm of London's literary circles: “I assure you, every one is charmed with The Minstrel.” 3
