Note 47 to Chapter 5 of the author's Pegasus in Harness: Victorian Publishing and W. M. Thackeray, which University Press of Virginia published in 1992. It has been included in the Victorian Web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright.
For lack of a better term I have used "general impression" to mean the series of printings of separate numbers, often separated by months and even years, that constitutes a separate and distinguishable printing of the book as a whole. Thus, while the publisher's records indicate that number 2, for instance, was printed six times between 1848 and 1866, only three impressions of the book as a whole have been distinguished.
Last modified: 4 April 2001