First edition statement

How to read it

Carter and Barker’s ABC for Book Collectors calls it the statement of edition, placed in most modern books on the back of the title leaf, and gives American examples: “First printing”, “First printing March 1920, Reprinted May 1920”. The phrase has two meanings in the book trade. The Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America (ABAA) defines the first edition as all the copies printed from the first setting of type, which can take in several printings, and adds that collectors who say first edition usually mean the first printing, and the earliest state or issue where there is more than one. The Independent Online Booksellers Association (IOBA) draws the same line: collectors use “first edition” as short for “first printing of the first edition”, while publishers, bibliographers and librarians use it for every copy reprinted without changes. In the publishers’ sense, a reprint from unchanged type is still the first edition. Many modern publishers also print a number line, which counts the printings.

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“Second edition” on a reprint

The words have run the other way too. The ABAA’s glossary says some 19th-century publishers labeled later printings as later editions, calling a second printing a “second edition”. Carter and Barker go further: at all periods, new impressions have often been called new editions in imprints and advertisements.

Printings before publication

ABC for Book Collectors records statements such as “First and second printings before publication”. Victor Gollancz and other 20th-century publishers sent a modest printing order with the copy, then raised it once or more on good reports of likely sales, and declared each increase a second, third or later printing before publication, before a single sheet had been printed.

Reprint publishers’ statements

IOBA lists publishers who mostly reprinted other houses’ books, among them A.L. Burt, Grosset & Dunlap, Saalfield and Tower. IOBA notes that they rarely published first editions. A Tower book will often say “First Tower edition”, and Grosset & Dunlap sometimes copied the original publisher’s printing information onto their own copyright pages.

First editions with no statement

Some first printings carry no statement. IOBA gives two examples: Faulkner’s Knight’s Gambit, published by Random House in 1949, has no statement of printing; Dangerous Visions, the anthology edited by Harlan Ellison and published by Doubleday in 1972, has none on its copyright page, and its first issue is known by the code N7 printed in the gutter of page 796 (the second issue has N40).

The statement and the number line together

Random House, until roughly 2003, printed First Edition in place of the 1 in its number line, IOBA records, so its first printings carry the statement above a line that starts at 2.