fisher t. unwin and victorian ‘ library series
novel is an example. If this was the last title in the series as I believe, then Unwin changed strategy again with it. AbeBooks lists nine copies as firsts that are not the Poppies design. They seem consis- tent with Sadleir’s copy (No. 1926): ‘Smooth apple-green cloth, blocked in dark green and brick red and lettered in gold’. Wol V had something similar (No. 5331), but with ‘dark red’ and ‘lettered in reverse’. Both regarded their copies as firsts and seem to have been unaware of the Poppies version. There are no copies of the Poppies design cover on AbeBooks. I believe therefore that the novel was first issued with the Poppies design, and a copy of that duly submit- ted to the British Library. This is the real first edition – as its scarcity online would surely suggest. The plainer, green cloth cover was in my view a reissue later that year when Unwin had decided to aban- don the Poppies series. In conclusion, all these titles (with the exception of Schreiner’s Dreams ) were first published as part of a new Unwin library series in the Poppies design cover by Selwyn Image. This includes Le Selve (which in any case, is, I think, more attractive in Image’s art nou- veau design than in the later and plainer green cloth binding). This suggests that, for the bibliographer and the collector concerned to establish true first editions, some caution is needed. Just because a title appears in one of Unwin’s ‘Library’ series, does not indicate, as with many other publishers of the time, a later edition or reprint. In fact, quite the reverse: given Unwin’s marketing strategy, the assumption must be that the series title is the first edition unless there is good evidence to the contrary. More generally, the identification of ‘firsts’ (for better or worse) is one of the cornerstones of the antiquarian book trade. I am not suggesting that the publication of original, new works in library series was in any way common; but equally, to assume that any volume from a publisher’s ‘library’ must by definition be a reprint or later edition, is a dangerous oversim- plification.
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