Stalking the Unmarked First

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.