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Book Minutiae

ote: This is in response to a reader’s question about the various Dear Ken,
dated ads which were placed in the 1854 first edition of A best-seller might go through many printings in just the first year
NThoreau’s Walden, but which can apply to other books also. and so it can be difficult to distinguish the various printings. Thankfully
for us, the publisher usually lists them on the copyright page or dust
Dear H, jacket because they like to brag about how many copies they were selling.
I suspect that bibliographers and book collectors may be putting too However, the initial demand for Walden was so small that it took eight
much faith in the dates of the ads as it may have been that the binder years to sell off the 2,000 copies that were printed in 1854.
may have just been putting in whatever ads were at hand and that their Sometimes when the actual printings are listed, they can come in
insertion may have been somewhat more random than is believed. Did variant bindings and be slightly different from each other. Or that can
they really pay that much attention to the date of the ads? happen within a single printing which would, I assume, be issue points,
If that is the case, then it could be argued that the copies with June of the printing or the edition. If the differences are just the color of
ads in Thoreau’s Walden published in August 1854, are the earliest the cloth on the boards and spine, I am doubtful if priority can be
bound copies, and the presence of the earlier April and May ads is determined because in most cases I think the color change is accidental
explained by the fact that they used after the June ads were used up or (i.e. they ran out of blue that day in the bindery and so used whatever
were possibly used contemporaneously with the June ads! That they other color they had on hand) and not deliberate, so I doubt if anyone
just grabbed any ads that were handy with no thought to the confusion thought that the color changes were worthy of being recorded and once
it would cause us. they’re out there, who knows,
and likely no one cared then.
Thanks, Jim One of the most extreme
cases of different color covers is
And my friend Ken on a history of Talbot Co.,
Callahan of Callahan and Co. MD titled Land of Legendary
Books adds: Lore published in 1898. While
there was only one print run of
Yes, ads bound-in can be the book, it has been seen in
different. If they are dated four or five different color
they can indicate a later issue. If bindings: if I remember light
they are not dated, you might gray, dark green, yellow, blue,
get a clue from the number of and maybe light green. The
pages, or even the books listed. title stamping on all copies was
In my experience, this has been the same, only the color was
mostly true with angling different. Recently someone
books, for some reason. This is claimed that they knew the pri-
rarely the case with modern ority of the colors, but I was
books, but the equivalent is dubious, to say the least. As I
different ads on first and said, I just don’t think anyone
second issue dust wrappers, dif- would have recorded that info.
ferent prices printed on dust And to support that theory,
rappers, etc. I seem to remember how many times have I looked
at least one book that had a up something in a bibliogra-
catalog of books bound in the phy when the issue points have
first edition, and in the second Close up of the May publisher’s ad inserted into some first editions of Walden. been given, but with the note
edition, books by a different “priority not determined.”
publisher (possibly when the publisher changed names or merged with Most of the time, the early printings are the same color, the color
another) bound in at the rear. Sometimes you get only a few pages of ads, variations discussed here are unusual, but not unheard of. I have never
but I have had one with a publisher’s catalog of books bound in that was heard of a case where different copies in the same printing or copies in
something like 56 pages. early printings were deliberately bound in different colors on purpose,
Then you get to the question of colors – which color binding is the but in the world of books, I guess anything is possible.
first issue, what happens when they run out of brown cloth and use blue – But as we know, all that minutiae, which no one else cares about, is
is that still a first issue? Like you, I love that stuff. what bibliographers, booksellers, and collectors live for. No bit of
minutiae is too tiny and insignificant for us to obsess about endlessly!
– Ken

James Dawson has owned and operated the Unicorn Bookshop in Trappe, MD since 1975, when he decided that it would be more fun to buy and sell old books and maps than to get
a “real” job. For a born collector like Jim, having a shop just might be another excuse to buy more books. He has about 30,000 second hand and rare books on the shelves, and just
about all subjects are represented. He can be contacted at P.O. Box 154; Trappe, MD 21673; 410-476-3838; unicornbookshopMD@gmail.com; www.unicornbookshop.com

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