In my earlier post, Edition vs. impression, I touched on the carefree habits of many publishers in the way they indicate printing history in their books. There’s no international standard (well, there probably is now: we seem to have standards for everything these days) for how you should refer to the printing history of your books, or indeed whether you have to refer to it at all. So one publisher may talk about impression, another about edition, another about printing, another just print a list of digits indicating the number of the printing, and yet another remain silent about the whole matter of how often the book has been reprinted and from which printing the copy you are looking at might come. An even more extraordinary twisting of the language is alluded to by John Carter in his ABC for Book Collectors. He tells us, referring to the printing of words like “First printing before publication” on the imprints page, “it is worth recording the practice of Victor Gollancz and other 20th-century publishers of sending a modest printing order with the copy for setting, subsequently increasing it, on more favourable reports of likely sales, once, twice or even more times. Each of these was declared the ‘second, third, nth printing before publication’ (now you even see ‘first printing’ or ‘first and second printing before publication’), and all before a single sheet had been printed.”
This means that when you see a claim about printings before publication, you should be cautious in believing it. It may well (will probably) be true that the “first and second printings before publication” were in fact a single printing. The phrase in effect means nothing more than “we changed our minds a couple of times about how many we should print”. There isn’t really enough time between printing and publication to allow for multiple printings: back in the last century you’d be lucky to get a reprint done in less than six weeks. I have been involved in books which went out fast and for which we had to place an order for a reprint a few days before the official publication date, but never one where we’d hold the first printing for a month or more and wait for the second printing to arrive before releasing the book. Such claims of multiple printings before publication are just a minor form of marketing: you, the bookstore browser are meant to think “Oh my; this book is so popular that they have to reprint it almost every week. I’d better rush to the till to secure my own copy before they run out”! The more “serious” the publishing house, the less likely such relatively harmless deceptive labelling is. I’ve not seen this sort of notice for a long time, so I suspect it’s a thing of the past.
Mr Carter goes on to consider the use of the words “first printing” to describe the publication of a poem or essay in a newspaper or magazine prior to book publication, where it clearly has a more literal sense. He also lists First published edition, which implies the existence of a private distribution prior to full book publication, and First separate edition, which might be used in a case where the piece in question had previously been published as part of another larger collective work.
Making Book 
[…] also First printing. For a different sense of the word “impression” please see Even […]
Thank you for this and your earlier post anent 1st etc printing nomenclature. It is helpful as i typeset the 2nd printing of the 2nd edition of a book of mine. The publisher’s guidance appears to be in flux.
Great to know one of my posts was of use. Thanks.
[…] The imprints page provides a wildly comprehensive printing history, something I’ve often called for, but here even I have to wonder if this isn’t way over the top. I must have bought this book […]
Hi Richard, I appreciate your explanations and thoughts pertaining to editions and impressions. I’m a collector of Pulitzer Prize winning novels (in the U.S.) and I’ve been ruminating over something about which I’d value your opinion. Two early (1920s) novels that won the Pulitzer were One of Ours by Willa Cather and Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis. Both had signed limited ‘editions’ published and had the first trade ‘edition’ (one by Knopf, the other by Harcourt, Brace and Co.) identified by their publisher as “second printings” after the signed limited edition. Both the Willa Cather archives and an early bibliographer argued that the signed limited and the trade variants of One of Ours are ‘issues’ of the first impression and not distinct printings because they met the criteria of being printed from the same typeset at the same time. [In fact, there are six variants of One of Ours considered as part of the first impression: two different signed limited variants, U.S. and Canadian advance booksellers variants, and U.S. and Canadian trade variants… all printed from the same typeset at the same time.] Just looking at the leaves from a signed limited and trade variant of One of Ours shows that they are the same except for paper, title pages, and the limitations pages. For Arrowsmith, the same is true… same printer stated on copyright page, and eyeballing the signed limited and the trade variants makes it clear that they differ only by paper/paper size, title page, and limitations page. But, an early bibliographer noted that the bill for printing of the signed limited variant was submitted December 1, 1924 and the bill for printing of the trade variant was submitted February 1, 1925. One presumes a two month gap between printings. Again, they’re both clearly from the same typeset. So, my question (finally!) is this: how much time lapsed is allowable for a printing to meet the first impression criteria of same typset, same time? I presume that the six variant issues of One of Ours were not literally run off at the exact same time and for all we know, there was a month or two gap between printing the first signed limited variant and the trade variant. The Cather bibliographer waved off the Knopf first trade copyright statement of second printing as incorrect. But, I can’t find a Sinclair Lewis bibliographer who speaks to this. Is the presumed two month gap in printing (presumed by the billing record in the archives) too much to meet the same time, same typeset definition of an issue within an impression? Thanks!
At the end of the day what people will think about this is what people will think about it.
From what you say it seems clear that both publishers intended the signed limited first edition to be regarded as the “collectible first edition” with the trade edition as a reprint. After all they described the printing which was released to the trade as the second printing: and what reason would we have to disbelieve them? There’s no potential gain for them in telling a fib about this. The Cather biographer’s disagreement with Knopf’s description would appear to be based upon the Fredson Bowers’ purist claim that all copies made from the first typesetting should all be regarded as first editions no matter when they take place. That just seems too rigid a definition for most people — after all technology has rendered it almost meaningless. So for my money I think the signed limited edition should be regarded as the first edition — but lots of dealers may well disagree. It’s not one of these questions with a right or wrong answer!
The two month gap between the billing might not be evidence of separate printing. It would be possible that the entire limited + first trade editions were printed at the same time, but the limited edition was bound in December while the trade edition wasn’t bound up until February being held as unbound sheets in the interim. The publishers might have had sufficient clout with the manufacturer to force them to delay billing even though they were only delivering the trade edition a couple of months later. However, I think that this is not likely to have been the case if the paper on which the limited edition is different from that used on the trade version.
I bet the trade version was not reprinted from standing type, but from stereos made from that type. Not sure what Prof. Bowers’ thoughts on this would be, though I guess he’d regard stereos as no different from a photographic facsimile in definitional terms, and therefore include both in his copious “first edition” definition. But as I say in the original post I think collectors have agreed not to be so “logical” in the every day world of book dealing.
So if you have the signed limited editions I’d say there’s no question that you own first editions. If you have the first trade editions, you might still be able to convince some buyers that what you had was a first edition, though you might fell a little guilty doing so. But then of course I dare say selling books from your collection is the last thing you’d be thinking of doing!
By coincidence I just heard a bit on the radio this morning about the Rodin Museum in Paris. Apparently they are surviving the shutdown better than many museums because Rodin left them the original moulds of his sculptures, and they are thus able to cast original Rodins today, and can of course sell them for good prices. Personally I cannot see how one could logically make a distinction between a sculpture cast in Rodin’s lifetime and one cast today. In both cases the work would be done by subcontracted craftsmen, not the artist himself.
Thanks for your thoughts Richard, I think you are right on target, beginning with your comment that “what people will think about this is what people will think about it”! I will say that publishers were very unreliable in distinguishing “editions” from “printings” in that era… another Pulitzer winner from the 1920s listed each subsequent printing (and there were multiple such printings in the same year as publication and those are clearly from the same type setting) as an “edition.” I’m a collector and not a book dealers, so my obsession with determining editions and impressions is to satisfy my own collecting desires! I was looking at a bibliography of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, and the bibliographer listed impressions of the first edition for more than 30 years after the first impression, including printings by publishers a collector would clearly call a reprint publisher (Grosset & Dunlap, Modern Library). I’m puzzled by that because I can’t imagine those much-later printings were from the “same typesetting” in any meaningful way. But, it’s sort of a moot point for a collector, since I’m pretty much mainly interested in the first impression (and, in the two cases I mentioned in my first comment, I’m interested in collecting the first trade edition as well, whether or not it is a second issue or second impression!). The Rodin example is a great one, and I agree with you. In any case, thanks very much for your thoughts, I appreciate your expert opinion.
Publishers’ practice in this sort of naming convention used admittedly to be all over the place. But bear in mind the secondary market was never a matter of concern to publishers, and there was no real pressure on them to conform to any common terminology. They just wanted to sell the books. I grew up in academic publishing where there was a perceived need to inform libraries and scholars just what it was they were holding in their hands, so consistency came earlier there. It’s now spreading a bit more widely, but no doubt with so much self publishing going now on we are due for a whole bunch more confusion.
Yes, good point. And, I’m an academician (even published a few books with Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press, where I see you worked), but I never had to worry about a book going into a second printing :-).