First Edition

In the early 1880s Alfred Barnard, secretary of Harper’s Weekly Gazette (the magazine that morphed into today’s Harpers Wine & Spirit), decided to visit all distilleries in Scotland, England and Ireland.

Among the book lots offered as part of an October 7-8 sale at Duke’s (25% buyer’s premium) the earliest was a Burgundian ‘Hours of the Virgin’ manuscript.

I have just received ATG No 2516 wherein the old question of first edition and first impression is raised in the Letters section.

Top lot in a sale held by Mallams (25% buyer’s premium) of Oxford was a 1719-20, first edition set of 'The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe…', 'The Farther Adventures…' and 'The Serious Reflections…' in later but very smart bindings of red morocco gilt by Francis Bedford of London.

I wonder if it could be explained to me why, in the currently fashionable world of ‘modern first editions’, there is a trend to link the words ‘first edition’ and ‘impression’ in the same sentence.

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

Remarkably well-preserved 1818 Frankenstein and 1897 Dracula firsts impress in New York

This first edition of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale will be offered for sale by Scammell Auctions in Adelaide on October 11.

Author’s works were well represented in London auction that included a £24,000 surprise

George Eliot’s much-admired novel 'Middlemarch…' made its first appearance in a parts issue in 1871.

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

Signed by the author and all members of the cast, the stage manager and the props manager, a 1943, Heinemann first of 'Present Laughter' was one of two Noel Coward plays that made up a lot sold for £1600 via thesaleroom.com in a Toovey’s (24.5% buyer’s premium) auction.

There were, inevitably, a few copies of Charles Dickens’ much-loved tale, 'A Christmas Carol', on offer at auction as the big day approached.

Sixteenth century book-maker’s creativity makes maths and astronomy more accessible

Peter Harrington’s Christmas 2020 catalogue features a selection of first and special editions such as this copy of 'Just So Stories' by Rudyard Kipling.

The artist, cleric, schoolmaster and author William Gilpin (1724-1804) is best known as a champion of the Romantic idea of the picturesque.

An 1859 first of Darwin’s seminal work shrugs off condition issues to be a best-seller

A 1776 first of Adam Smith’s '…Wealth of Nations' sold in a New York summer sale bore an understandably irritated inscription by the man to whom it had been gifted by its author.

An October 27-30 sale of more than 2800 lots at Reiss & Sohn of Königstein-im-Taunus includes a 1583 first of Georg Bartisch’s Opthalmodouleia…, a famous work on eye surgery that is also the first extensively illustrated account of any surgical speciality.