The Mystique Of First Editions-2

Pradeep Sebastian

I had said in the last column that identifying a first edition is tricky business — actually it is notoriously tricky as most book dealers and collectors will readily admit. When the copy in question is a hypermodern (roughly, books published from the 1960s to the present), it is fairly straightforward: the publisher indicates in one way or the other on the copyright page that it is a first edition, or even better, a first printing.

The case with antiquarian books and modern first editions can be complicated. I will stick with modern editions for now: what complicates identifying a first printing here are two factors: the proliferation of book club editions and print run errors from the publisher. Book Club editions are basically cheap editions of famous books put out by book clubs. From the 1920s to the 1950s, these editions, which resembled publisher's editions closely, were in such abundance that most readers bought these instead of first editions because they were cheaper.

But a book club edition is mostly worthless. But since they could sometimes pass off for a first edition, it is not uncommon for some fledgling collector to think he owns a first edition when it is only a book club edition. Luckily, this edition can be easily made out: they don't have the price on the jacket flap, and there is usually a mark — like a dot, often referred to in the trade as a 'blindstamp' on the cover boards. If none of these are present, they are still easily found out for the cheap paper used, cloth covers instead of boards, and a smaller format for the book. There are, however, just a few instances in modern editions where even a book club edition becomes collectible. This is when a first edition is scarce — even rare — and a book club edition is nearly as scarce. So, coming upon a book club edition of The Great Gatsby or The Catcher In The Rye or Ira Levin's A Kiss Before Dying is not easy, and if you do, you should grab it.

It becomes truly tricky with the second category: printing mistakes. This is simply an error or typo from those letter press printing days — typos that are noticed after a first print run is over.

To set it right, the publisher will do second print run with the typos/errors corrected. This second run is only a break in the first run, and is not a second printing or second edition. Let me illustrate with an entry from a book dealer's catalogue for the true first edition of another modern classic: "Steinbeck, John. The Moon Is Down New York Viking,1942. First edition, first state with "talk.this" on page 112. Fine in a near fine dust jacket. $150." The catalogue is calling your attention to a printing mistake! 'Talk.this": in the first print run they allowed that period to get between two words in the same sentence. And now, decades later, it is exactly that copy with that error in it that indentifies it as the first first print run. By default this copy becomes the true first edition.

In the book trade such identifying print marks are called 'Points of Issue'. This book has one point of issue but there are other books with several points of issue to contend with.

'Points of Issue' in a book are what separate the fist state from the second state. The first state is the part of the first printing before they found the mistakes. If the publisher discovers that the second print run also has typos, it becomes the second state. Some dealers have these points memorised (!) but fortunately there are books now that list points of issue for various editions. The handiest one is by Bill McBride called A Pocket Guide To The Identification of First Editions, a pocket size book that one can carry around easily.

The first thing a rare or antiquarian book dealer will tell you is not to use the word 'rare' casually. Many books that we think of as rare are to the dealer only 'out of print'. Antiquarian dealers frequently come across out of print books and editions in their daily dealings. It is only the retail bookstore and its patrons, namely us, who find it hard to come by a book that is no longer in print. A large portion of a book dealer's stock consists of out of print or limited editions. A book that even a dealer comes across a few times is called 'scarce'. A scarce copy. It's only the book(s) that the dealer sees once in a decade — and sometimes a lifetime — that will be honored with the term, 'rare'.

One such legendary rare item is, of course, the true first edition of Scot F. Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Why true first edition? Because this is one book that has at least three or four states of printing! There are perhaps a handful of copies of the first true edition (first edition, first issue) of this book circulating in the market: that is, a good book jacket (if not a bright one) with all the points intact. It is notoriously hard to come by one which has both: if the points are intact –that is all the errors and typos from the very first print run are duly present –the jacket will have a tear or would be faded.

All this talk about modern American editions makes me curious and eager to learn about the antiquarian book trade in India. We know so little about it. What would be termed as a rare Indian book? And what could we call a modern first or a hypermodern here — a first edition of English, August perhaps? What about a first printing of Narayan's Swami And Friends? This is something I have been researching, and soon hope to have some good and interesting answers!