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EDITOR’S NOTE

As the editor of this new edition of TOBY’S autobiography, I should like to make a few brief remarks to those readers who may, by chance, take up this volume knowing nothing of the circumstances of its origin or first publication. You hold in your hands one of the most remarkable volumes ever to be published – indeed, the sole known Memoir of any creature of other than the Human race. Such a statement may at first seem to stretch the reader’s credulity, but I hasten to assure you that this narrative requires no suspension of our ordinary notions of reality – only a realisation of how vast, indeed, that reality may be. The accomplishments of TOBY, in regard to his acquisition of Language, and his use of this ability in pursuit of writing a Narrative of his own, are too well documented to admit of any doubt. Many of the luminaries of the Eighteenth Century, the eminent Dr Johnson himself among them, attest to its veracity. As for the historical particulars, however, I shall leave these to the brief appendix that I have inserted after the main narrative, where those who are additionally curious may satisfy that most vital of all human impulses.

The text of the present volume is based on that of the first edition of 1809, which preserves what is by far the most authoritative text. Only three complete copies are known, one at the Bodleian (which was the copyright deposit), one in the library of the University of Edinburgh, and one in the National Library of Ireland in Dublin. Having compared and collated all of them, I can with assurance state that they are all from the identical impression, and contain no substantive variants besides the inevitable differences in the binding and trimming of the pages. The second printing of 1810, and all subsequent versions, are deficient not only in the main text, but in the great variety of spurious additions and emendations, more with each printing, which insert all manner of asides and comic interludes, so utterly different in tone and style from the original that I am quite certain they are the work of other hands (the more so as they continued to be added to subsequent editions well into the 1840s, by which time the original Author had long since expired). This is, therefore, the very first modern printing to contain the true and accurate account of TOBY’S career, without any ornaments other than those that he gave it himself.

I have not altered the substance of the text in any way, and I have only modernised the punctuation as much as seemed absolutely necessary to retain the sense; the distinctive use of Capitalisation (quite common in its day) has been retained. It is to be hoped that this modest volume may earn for TOBY a new generation of readers, hitherto unacquainted with his adventures, who will find in them as curious and absorbing a mirror of Nature as did those who first perused these pages more than two centuries ago.

Russell Potter, Ph.D., MA, BA

October 2010