BACKGROUND TO THE PUBLICATION OF THE ABRIDGED EDITION, 1885

WHY WAS IT that the Abridged Original was published? This was in June 1885 nine months after Bird had finished working on the wide-ranging and detailed deletions as requested in 1884 by John Murray III who had planned the publication of an Abridged Original - but what was his reason for publishing it?1 And why is it that most of the replica editions are of this Abridged Original? I will set out the details based on an analysis of material I obtained during visits to John Murray's offices in the summer of 1994.

What I first need to point out is that it was very definitely not because sales of the Complete Original two-volume edition were not going well.This bookwas publish edin October 1880 with an initial print run of 4,000 copies, outstripping by far the bestselling Six Months in the Sandwich Islands with 1,250 copies sold, and the 2,500 copies sold of A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains, demonstrating a pre-publi cation assessment of the interest it would generate.

By December 1880 three further printings had taken place, comprising 1,545 copies, 1,030 copies and 1,030 copies, making an overall total of 7,605 copies sold within three months of publication. In the following year, 1881, an additional 510 copies were printed and as of June 1881 only 213 copies were left in stock. A further 130 copies had been sold by the end of June 1882 and fifty-six copies a year later, with only twenty-four copies remaining in stock as at the end of June 1884. In other words, Murray's request to Bird to make deletions for the purpose of producing an Abridged Edition was made only when the Complete Original was almost completely sold out.

The book received enthusiastic reviews in newspapers and magazines such as The Quarterly Review, St. James's Gazette, The Scotsman, Athenaeum and The Contemporary Review and attracted favourable comments not Just from Minister Parkes and Secretary Satow in Japan who had been so instrumental in facilitating Bird's travels, but also from Parkes's predecessor, Sir Rutherford Alcock, the first British Minister to Japan.