Talk:First edition
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I deleted the following section because the point of the discussion about Hemingways Old Man in the Sea is to give a concrete example of when a "first" is not a "first edition." This is to address the common misperception that a first edition is the first version of the text. It was not intended to express a "view" of how book collectors should collect but to explain that the adjective "first" has a very specific meaning.
The deleted text, however, points out deficiencies with the previous text, which I have tried to address.
As a factual matter, very few libraries collect proofs in any kind of systematic way. If they have proofs, they usually arrived as part of a collection or an archive. Also, while a proof of Ulysses (1922 Paris edition) would be rare and valuable, the book's troubled publication history make it less than an ideal example. The first edition (Paris, 1922) is perhaps the worst text version of the book as it was printed by people who didn't speak English.
Deleted 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.
