The general rule
Open to the copyright page, on the back of the title page. Look for a number line, a statement of printing history, or a date. Where a book’s publication details are in doubt, the British Library catalogue records the edition deposited at publication. The edition and printing guide explains what each means.
What follows is the publisher-specific detail that the general rule leaves out, and it is where most mistakes happen.
Start with the decade
The conventions changed, and a rule from one period tells you nothing in another.
| Published | What identifies a first printing |
|---|---|
| Before 1900 | No statement. Date on the title page, publisher’s advertisements at the back and their dates, binding cloth, and the points recorded in author bibliographies |
| 1900 to 1940 | “First published [year]” with nothing after it. Absence of a reprint line is the evidence |
| 1940 to 1970 | The same statement, plus publisher codes and impression lines in some houses |
| 1970 onwards | Number lines in general use. The lowest number present is the printing |
A book from 1935 has no number line and never did. Looking for one and failing to find it proves nothing at all.
British publishers
Faber and Faber. “First published in [year]” with no further printings listed. Reprints add “Reprinted [year]”. Modern Faber uses a number line.
Jonathan Cape. “First published [year]” on the copyright page. Ian Fleming’s Bond novels are the reason Cape firsts matter, and the jackets matter more than the books.
Bloomsbury. Number line, with 1 present on a first printing. The 1997 Philosopher’s Stone reads 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1.
Victor Gollancz. Yellow jackets, and “First published [month] [year]” on the copyright page with no impression line beneath. Gollancz published crime and science fiction that collectors chase, and the jackets are fragile.
George Allen and Unwin. “First published in [year]” and nothing further. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are the reason the house is checked, and both carry well-documented points beyond the statement.
Hodder and Stoughton. “First printed [year]”, with later printings listed beneath. The wording is “printed” rather than “published”, which catches people searching for the wrong phrase.
Chatto and Windus, Secker and Warburg, Heinemann. “First published [year]” and nothing after it. Heinemann’s Graham Greene firsts are the most traded.
Michael Joseph and Hamish Hamilton. “First published in Great Britain [year]”. Reprints add the year beneath.
Methuen. Lists its impressions explicitly. A first printing shows one line; a fifth shows five.
Macmillan. Date match between title page and copyright page on older books, and a stated first edition on modern ones.
Cassell. “First published [year]”. Churchill’s histories are the ones that come up, and they are common in sets.
John Murray. The date on the title page, and the absence of a later one on the copyright page. The house is old enough that nineteenth-century rules apply to most of it.
The Bodley Head. “First published [year]”, with the Agatha Christie titles the ones worth checking.
Collins Crime Club. Agatha Christie’s publisher from 1926. First printings state the year on the title page and carry no reprint statement. Jackets are scarce and carry most of the value.
Penguin. Paperback firsts of the 1930s and 1940s are collected by number. The date on the copyright page and the absence of “Reprinted” identify a first printing.
American publishers
Scribner’s. From 1930 an “A” on the copyright page marked a first printing. Before that, a seal and a date match.
Random House. “First Edition” stated, and from the 1970s a number line whose lowest number is 2 rather than 1 on a first printing. That quirk is the single most misread convention in the trade: a Random House book stating “FIRST EDITION” above a line ending in 2 is a first.
Knopf. “First Edition” beneath the copyright line, with a Borzoi colophon. Later printings say which.
Viking, Harper, Doubleday. “First Edition” or “First Printing” stated and removed on reprints, with documented exceptions that the reference guides list.
Little, Brown. Date match on title and copyright pages before the 1970s, then number lines.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux. “First edition” stated, with a number line beneath.
Simon and Schuster. A number line running 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2, which reads oddly and means the same thing: find the lowest number.
Bantam, Ballantine and other paperback houses. Letter lines rather than numbers. A first printing shows an A, or a line beginning A B C D.
Number lines in practice
| Line | Printing |
|---|---|
| 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 | First |
| 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 | Second, unless the publisher is Random House |
| 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 | First |
| 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 | Third |
| First Edition, above 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 | First, at Random House |
| A B C D E F | First |
| 98 99 00 01, beside a number line | The years the line covers, not the printing |
The lowest number present is the printing. A line with a 1 in it is a first printing everywhere except Random House, and the stated “First Edition” resolves that case.
Book club editions
Book club copies are the commonest false positive on any shelf, because many carry the publisher’s own first-edition statement. They were printed from the same plates for club members and have no collector value.
| Tell | Where to look |
|---|---|
| No price on the jacket flap | Top right corner, or a blank square where the price was |
| “Book Club Edition” printed on the flap | Bottom of the front flap |
| A blind-stamped dot, square or maple leaf | Lower right corner of the rear board, under the jacket |
| Smaller trim size and thinner boards | Compare against another copy |
| Cheaper paper, greyer and rougher | Fan the block |
| A club name on the spine or title page | Reprint Society, Companion Book Club, BCA, Literary Guild |
Ex-library copies carry stamps, pockets and reinforced jackets, and sell at a heavy discount whatever the printing.
Points of issue
A point is a detail the first printing has and later ones do not. Points beat statements, because a publisher can print anything on a copyright page but cannot un-print a typo.
| Book | The point |
|---|---|
| A Christmas Carol, 1843 | “Stave I” rather than “Stave One”, title page in red and blue, green endpapers |
| The Hobbit, 1937 | “Dodgeson” misspelt on the rear jacket flap, corrected in the second impression |
| Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, 1997 | “1 wand” listed twice in the equipment list on page 53, and “Philospher’s Stone” missing an o on the lower cover |
| Casino Royale, 1953 | Fleming’s own jacket design, no review quotations anywhere on it |
Every seriously collected author has a published list of points, and the reference books carry them. Checking a point takes a minute and settles what a copyright page cannot. The Harry Potter guide works through all five points on the 1997 Bloomsbury book, and what the first, third and fourth impressions have made.
Before 1900
Victorian and earlier books rarely state the printing. The identifiers are the date on the title page, the publisher’s advertisements bound at the back and their dates, the binding cloth and its stamping, and the points recorded in the author bibliographies.
Dickens in parts, Trollope in three volumes and the Brontës under their pseudonyms all have well-documented first issues and well-documented traps. Three-volume novels are worth money only when complete and in original cloth; rebound sets are reading copies.
The three reference books worth owning
McBride’s Points of Issue and A Pocket Guide to the Identification of First Editions cover publisher conventions in a few pages each. Ahearn’s Collected Books: The Guide to Values lists points and prices by author. Between them they answer most questions for under £60.
When a first printing is not enough
A first printing in a torn jacket, or with a previous owner’s inscription, or from a book club, sells for a fraction of a clean copy. Identification is the first half of the job.
The value guide covers the rest, with a worked table showing what condition does to one book across eight grades, and the price records give illustrative figures for clean copies.
