IN this edition I have tried to offer a text which preserves as faithfully as possible Mandeville’s spelling and punctuation and at the same time represents his final intention as to its wording. Since none of the editions in his lifetime or later aims at both these ideals, I have had to construct an eclectic text instead of presenting a facsimile of any extant edition.
Eighteenth-century compositors were allowed considerable freedom in altering the accidentals of a manuscript (spelling, punctuation, italicization and use of capitals) to suit their own taste or that of their printing house. The first edition of a book, set from the author’s manuscript, can be expected to preserve a certain proportion of the author’s characteristic spelling and punctuation along with modifications introduced by the compositor. Each successive edition, however, being normally set from a copy of the previous edition, introduces further modifications by the next compositor, so that the proportion of accidentals for which the author was responsible grows less with each reprinting. The first edition, therefore, while not an entirely faithful facsimile of what the author wrote, reproduces the general texture of his writing more closely than any reprint.
Compositors of the eighteenth century were fairly scrupulous, on the other hand, in trying to follow the actual wording of their author. The presence of a number of important substantive variants (substitution, addition, or deletion of words) in a later edition, therefore, is evidence usually of the author’s revision. These variants represent for the most part deliberate alterations in the text which the author wished to have included in future editions, although a few will be errors for which the compositor was unwittingly responsible. Any modern editor, then, who aims at preserving the general texture of the author’s manuscript along with his final revisions must adopt the first edition as his copy text and incorporate into this text all substantive variants from later editions for which the author can be assumed to have been responsible. The task is compounded for Mandeville’s editor, however, by the fact that The Fable of the Bees grew by stages over a period of nearly twenty years, so that no single edition is the ‘first edition’ of the entire book.
The Grumbling Hive was first published in 1705 and a pirated edition of no textual authority appeared the same year. I have used the Bodleian Library copy of the genuine first edition as my copy text for this poem as well as for the verses from the poem which appear at the head of each remark (and on three occasions in the body of the remarks as well). The Fable of the Bees was first published in 1714 and a second edition, which is a page-for-page reprint of the first, appeared the same year. Besides reprinting the poem, the first edition included ‘The Preface’, ‘The Introduction’, ‘An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue’, and twenty of the remarks. For all these prose pieces my copy text has been the Ashley Library copy of the first edition, now in the British Museum. The ‘second edition’ (really the third) appeared in 1723. Besides reprinting the material in the first edition from a copy of that edition, it included the following new material set from manuscript: Remarks N and T in their entirety, all but the first paragraph of Remarks G and Y, the greater part of Remark C as well as a paragraph in Remark L, ‘An Essay on Charity and Charity-Schools’, ‘A Search into the Nature of Society’, and the ‘Index’. My copy text for this new material has been the Harvard University Library copy of the 1723 edition. The ‘third edition’ (really the fourth) appeared in 1724 and besides reprinting all the previous material from a copy of the 1723 edition included two new pages to ‘The Preface’ as well as the ‘Vindication of the Book’. Since the addition to ‘The Preface’ was set from manuscript, I have taken this from a copy of the 1724 edition in my possession. The ‘Vindication’, however, while new to The Fable of the Bees, was set from a separate pamphlet which was in turn a reprint of material in the Evening Post for 11 July 1723 (‘Presentment of the Grand Jury’) and in the London Journal for 27 July 1723 (‘Letter to Lord C.’) and 10 August 1723 (Mandeville’s letter of defence). I have therefore used copies of these issues in the Burney Collection, British Museum, as the copy text for the ‘Vindication’.
Besides adding all this new material to the editions of 1714, 1723, and 1724, Mandeville in each case made substantial revisions in the parts which had been previously published, adding, deleting, and substituting words, phrases, and entire sentences. Although he did not add any new material to the next edition, 1725, he must have been responsible for introducing further revisions into the text, for the nature and frequency of the substantive variants in this edition can only be explained as due to the intervention of the author. The remaining editions of the Fable which appeared in his lifetime, those of 1728, 1729, and 1732 (set from a copy of the 1728 edition) were not, however, revised by Mandeville. These three editions contain far fewer substantive variants than any of the previous editions and all of them can be easily ascribed to the compositor. I have therefore ignored these three editions, while introducing into the text of the present edition all substantive variants from the editions of 1714, 1723, 1724, and 1725 which can be reasonably assumed to be authoritative, but omitting a few variants in each of these editions which I ascribe to the compositor.
In choosing among substantive variants, I have had to assume the responsibility of deciding which ones were likely to have been made by Mandeville. Where the text was altered for the better by a later variant, the choice was an easy one. In the case of indifferent readings, I have thought it best to give Mandeville the benefit of the doubt and accept the change in the text. But where the variants were obvious errors or did not accord with what I judged to be Mandeville’s usage, I have rejected them without scruple. On four occasions I have made unauthorized corrections in order to restore normal eighteenth-century usage. All page references in the text to other parts of the Fable have been silently altered to conform to the present edition. The results will not satisfy every reader in all cases, but I believe that the text presented here is closer to what Mandeville wrote than that of any previous edition.
I have annotated the text only to the extent of clarifying obscure allusions, defining words no longer in common usage, and translating Latin phrases and quotations as well as identifying the latter. Mandeville regularly names the authors of quotations which he gives in English, and I have not thought it necessary to specify the works from which they are taken, except for English authors. Those who wish to trace the sources of Mandeville’s many quotations from Continental authors and of his individual ideas should consult F. B. Kaye’s admirable annotation to the Clarendon Press edition of The Fable of the Bees. I have also noted all passages, of at least a sentence in length, which Mandeville added to the Fable in 1723 and 1724, so that the reader can trace the book’s growth.
The Fable of the Bees facsimile title page of the first edition.