Then, in the last fifty years or so (but beginning as early as the 1940’s), in general, most publishers began to use some version of a number line (also referred to as a printer’s key or publisher’s code) on the copyright page, with a first printing indicated by the presence of the number 1. Publishers began to make statements such as “First Edition”, “First Printing”, “Published” or “First Published (followed by the year or month and year) For more modern books, however, there began to be a trend towards putting this information on the copyright page instead. Over the years there have been thousands of publishers, each using various methods for distinguishing a first edition.īooks published prior to around 1900 are somewhat more easily identified, as publishers generally put the date on the title page of the first edition, although sometimes it can be found on the last page of the book. Here we will give you some basic tools to help you identify your first edition, but if would like more in-depth information, we recommend Collected Books by Allen and Patricia Ahearn or First Edition Points website.įirst edition identification would be an easy task if there were only one publishing house and they remained consistent in their printing methods over the years, but alas this is far from the case. Although it seems like it should be fairly straight forward, there is so much to know about first identification that whole books and websites are devoted to the subject.
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