Stalking the Unmarked First

- Scot Kamins

About 90% of Modern Library first editions are fairly easy to spot. They have some indication of their elevated status on the copyright page -- First Modern Library Edition, New Edition, First Printing, Modern Library Edition <<month, year>>, or some other catchy phrase. To spot really early firsts (1917 - 1918), you can use Boni-Liveright 1917-1918 Front Catalogs. As Bill Hornick points out, some books such as Turgenov's Smoke you're reduced to going by the binding style and nearly nothing else.

About 60 titles -- most of them published between 1959 and 1965 -- have no specific indication of a first; but luckily you can often spot these hidden firsts by knowing the characteristics of the binding, the number on the inverse of the dust jacket indicating how many ML titles are in the current catalog (for those pre-1964 issues that had numbers), and/or the catalog of current listings in the book itself.

The following table, gleaned from entries in the Toledano Price Guide and from collectors, provides the characteristics you'll need to check. The Catalog column refers to the number of titles in the currently available catalog; this number is displayed somewhere on the dust jacket, usually at the top of the dust jacket's inverse. For additional confirmation, if the book and/or dust jacket has the catalog of current listings, use the table in Barry Neavill's Dating Key.

For more hints on spotting and dating unmarked firsts, see the FAQ How can I tell if a book is a first Modern Library edition? For the opposite condition to this situation—firsts that retained their first edition slugs beyond the intitial printings—see False Firsts.

Number  Author Title Binding Catalog
310.1 Aeschylus  Complete Greek Tragedies I  393 
311.1 Aeschylus Complete Greek Tragedies II 8 415
231.1 Bergson Creative Evolution 8 299
198.2 Browning Selected Poetry 8 371
195.2 Byron Selected Poetry 8 370
352.1 Camus Fall and Exile/Kingdom 11 [no #]
353.1 Capote Selected Writings 11 no #]
236.1 Dana Two Years Before the Mast 8 304
348.1 Dewey On Education 11 [no #]
338.1 Ellison Invisible Man 11 [no #]
314.1 Euripides Complete Greek Tragedies V 8 405
315.1 Euripides Complete Greek Tragedies VI 9 415
316.1 Euripides Complete Greek Tragedies VII 9 [no #]
320.1 Hamilton Greek Way 8 403
329.1 Hart Act I 8 415
223.2 Hellman Six Plays 8 393
328.1 Hersey Hiroshima 8 408
334.1 Hesse Steppenwolf 9 415
340.1 Hume Philosophy 11 [no #]
307.1 Ibsen Wild Duck & Other Plays 393
233.1 Kaufman & Hart Six Plays 8 299
303.1  Kierkegaard Anthology 8 388
325.1 Livy History of Rome 8 408
065.3 Machiavelli Prince/Discourses 8 271
321.1 Mailer Naked & The Dead 8 403
317.1 Malamud Two Novels 11 [no #]
309.1 Malthus On Population 8 393
322.1 Mill Philosophy 8 403
345.1 Misc. Eight Spanish Plays 11 [no #]
238.1 Misc. Great Tales of American West 8 304
183.2 Misc. Making of Society 7 253
344.1 Misc. Medieval Philosophy 11 [no #]
337.1 Misc. Roman Comedies 11 [no #]
341.1 Misc. Twenty German Poets 11 [no #]
343.1 Nash Verses from 1929 On 11 [no #]
323.1 O'Hara Butterfield 8 8 403
342.1 O'Neill Ah, Wilderness & 2 Other Plays 11 [no #]
215.1 Reed Ten Days That Shook the World 7 * 236
335.1 Sartre Age of Reason 9 415
319.1 Shaw Selected Short Stories 8 403
274.1 Shelley Selected Poetry and Prose 8 352
126.3 Snow Red Star Over China [see note] 8 303
312.1 Sophocles Complete Greek Tragedies III 8 393
313.1 Sopholces Complete Greek Tragedies IV 8 403
332.1 Stein Selected Writings 8 415
216.1 Steinbeck Tortilla Flat 7 253
350.1 Styron Lie Down in Darkness 11 [no #]
230.2 Tennyson Selected Poetry 8 376
155.2 Thoreau Walden and Other Writings 7 253
347.1 Tolstoy Selected Essays 11 [no #]
346.1 Tolstoy Short Stories 11 [no #]
126.5 Wodehouse Selected Stories 8 383
Giant Issues        
G015.1 Cervantes Don Quixote G3 225
G019.1 Homer Complete Works G3 236
G018.1 Ibsen Eleven Plays G3 236
G057.2 Melville Selected Writings G5 358
G077.1 Misc. Anthology of Fam. Amer. Stories G5 367
G085.1 Misc. Great Ages & Ideas of Jew. People G5 [no #]
G087.1 Misc. Medieval Epics G5 [no #]
G090.1 Misc. Philosophy of Art & Beauty G6 [no #]
G088.1 O'Hara 49 Short Stories G6 [no #]
G086.1 Pasternak Doctor Zhivago G5 415
G050.1 Whitman Leaves of Grass G4 271

* 7.25" tall rather than 6.5", with blank end papers [Thanks to bookseller Amy Comeau for pointing this out to me]

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