Yeoman's in the Fork Blog

I received an email the other day from a gentleman from the United Kingdom questioning whether a G. A. Henty book I just uploaded was a First Edition or not. I’m not terribly familiar with Henty’s books and had possibly made an error in identifying it as a First edition. The gentleman, who happened to be a researcher for The Henty Society, offered his help to determine its true state.

This led me to wonder just what is the best way to determine the correct state of a book? An easy answer now is of course the vast knowledge pool that is the Internet. This holds truer for more modern books but unfortunately for that particular Henty book (and various other older books I’ve researched), information is oftentimes very scarce or just plain incorrect.

In the modern age of literature publishers made it a bit easier to determine whether a book is a first edition / first printing. If you pick up a new book now most likely you will find “First Edition” stated on the copyright page, a number line that counts down to 1, or a combination of both. This kind of marking goes back to the 1940s. My early education on examples of this kind were first editions by William Faulkner, with most of them simply stating 'First Printing.'

Perhaps my favorite instance of unique first edition indicators was found in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic The Great Gatsby. If you are reading this blog you are probably familiar with the necessary issue points that are found in a true first printing of that book. Just imagine what it would be like finding a pristine copy in a random yard sale in Wichita, KS and thumbing through to find the correct issue points!

Before the modern era’s somewhat universal marking system across publishers, every publisher seemingly had their own system of first edition indication, which in my opinion fell in between two categories: “whatever” and “we don’t really care.” For someone like me who come across new old books every day and catalog them, this can be aggravating. Luckily there a number of books out there about…BOOKS!

Some of the ones we have in house include:

http://www.yeomansinthefork.com/bookstore/collectors-book-books-first-edition-p-3426.html

http://www.yeomansinthefork.com/bookstore/first-editions-guide-identification-edition-printing-p-110.html

http://www.yeomansinthefork.com/bookstore/catherine-porter-millers-collecting-books-first-thus-edition-p-3299.html

Others I would recommend are Pocket Guide to the Identification of First Editions by Bill McBride and ABC for Book Collectors by John Carter.

All of these are valuable resources for someone who needs help (like me) in determining exactly what they have. Couple that with the Internet (it’s not all bad!) and finding First Edition information has never been easier.

And to end the story, I had a nice conversation with the Henty Society researcher and after going through all the issue points, we determined that our copy of With Lee in Virginia was indeed a First US Edition. Great news for us! While I may have had it right before by assuming, it’s much better to find out for sure!

(many thanks to Roger Childs of http://hentysociety.org/ for all his help!)