First edition
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see also : The First Edition, the musical group fronted by Kenny Rogers.
The term first edition traditionally refers to all copies of a book printed with the same or substantially the same setting of type. However, the precise meaning has slight, but significant, variations in the fields of bibliography, book collecting, and publishing.
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Bibliographers' definition
The classic explanation of edition was given by Fredson Bowers in Principles of Bibliographical Description (1949). Bowers wrote that an edition is “the whole number of copies printed at any time or times from substantially the same setting of type-pages,” including “all issues and variant states existing within its basic type-setting, as well as all impressions.”
Over the years, Bowers’s definition of edition has been slightly streamlined by other bibliographers. What remains, however, is the core: an edition is all copies of a book printed “from substantially the same setting of type,” including all minor typographical variants.
In the lead type era, printers usually did not have enough type to keep an entire book set up and ready for printing. As a result, nearly every time a book was printed, it had to be reset and that created a new edition. From time to time, in the middle of printing a book, an error in the text or a piece of broken type would be spotted, the presses stopped, and the problem fixed. These minor changes introduced typographical variations in the finished books. Some books would contain the mistake or broken type while others would incorporate the changes. These changes do not constitute a new edition.
In the modern era, books are typeset electronically, and a book may go through hundreds of printings using the same setting of type. Publishers often use the same typesetting for the hardcover and trade paperback versions of a book. While these books may have different covers and small changes to the title page and copyright page, from a bibliographer's standpoint, they are technically part of the same edition.
Book collectors' definition
Book collectors generally use the term "first edition" as shorthand for "first edition, first printing" (or "first edition, first impression" in the United Kingdom). Bowers defines a "printing" as “the whole number of copies of an edition printed from identical type-pages at any one time.” Book collectors do not consider a second printing of a book using the same typesetting to be a first edition, although bibliographers do.
Publishers' definition
The term "first edition" does not have a standard definition in the publishing world. Publishers use the term for their own purposes, with little consistency. Publishers of trade books may mark a book "first edition" on the copyright page, but this may mean that it is the first edition by the current publisher, ignoring previous versions, or it may be the first edition with a particular set of illustrations or editorial commentary. Textbook publishers often use the term edition to distinguish between revisions of the text.
Sources of confusion
A common complaint of book collectors is that the term first edition is used incorrectly. Typically, this complaint centers on the use of the bibliographer's definition in a book-collecting context. For example, J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye remains in print in hardcover. The typesetting remains the same as the 1951 first printing and therefore all hardcover copies are, for the bibliographer, the first edition. Book collectors would use the term first edition for the first printing only.
When a first is not a first edition
The word “first” in "first edition" might seem to refer to absolute chronological priority of publication, but in collecting and bibliographical terms, this is often not the case. “First edition” most often refers to the first commercial publication of a work between its own covers, even if it appeared earlier in another form. The complete text of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea appeared in the September 1, 1952 issue of Life magazine, yet the generally accepted “first” edition is the hardcover book Scribner’s published on September 8, 1952.
In addition to placing a lower priority on this kind of periodical publication, most collectors give similar treatment to first appearances in anthologies and to the advance copies—bound galleys, uncorrected proofs, advance reading copies—sent out by publishers to book reviewers, booksellers, and others in the literary or public relations fields. Proof copies of the Life edition of Hemingway’s story exist and are among the earliest printed copies of the book, yet none but the most committed Hemingway collectors want these large, ungainly, and somewhat unattractive versions of the novel for their collections. Descriptive bibliographers also rarely give consideration to these early forms of a text.
An alternative view here is equally or more widespread than the view expressed above: the LIFE galleys of Hemingway's piece are not collectible because they are a magazine proof, not a book proof. Galleys, proofs, and the more recent (and more widely available) advance reading copies have long been considered important in the book collecting world. Interest in them is not limited to the most fanatical private collectors, but rather many institutions collect them in their Rare Books and Special Collections departments, because they are often textually significant, they precede the first trade edition, and they are done in very small quantities. It is safe to say that a proof copy of James Joyce's Ulysses with significant textual variations from the published book would be considered a most important item in the history of 20th century literature; that being the case, all other book proofs' importance is a matter of degree, not of kind.
An extreme version of this view holds that proofs and galleys are the true first editions, since they are printed and bound and then distributed, albeit not widely, by the publisher to a reading public consisting of reviewers, wholesale book buyers, etc. This view is held by a small minority in the book collecting world, but not necessarily smaller than the minority that views advance copies as dismissible altogether.
References
- Bowers, Fredson. Principles of Bibliographical Description, Winchester and New Castle, Delaware : St Paul's Bibliographies and Oak Knoll Press, 2005 (reprint edition, first published in 1949).