At 10:32 PM +0900 1/29/06, John R. Yamamoto-Wilson wrote:
C.J. Scheiner wrote:
>If a publication is an exact photo-lithographic copy of an out of print
>typeset book that was never previously reprinted in any form, would the
>new version be technically a second edition or a second printing...?
>
>So often I see this issue [no pun intended, presumably!] skirted by the
>descriptive phrase "first edition as such".
David Klappholz replied:
I can't imagine why it would be anything but "photo reproduction
of first edition."
Isn't that just another way of skirting the issue? <snip> Suppose
it had gone into ten
printings of the first edition and then here had been several reprint
editions. Wouldn't it be rather absurd for someone a century or so later to
describe a facsimile edition of the first edition as an eleventh printing? I
would expect to see it described as a separate edition.
I'm with Dave on this - although I am hardly an expert in bibliography -
seems to me a book might have had 3 editions in the 1800's - and then
maybe there was a trade paperback facsimile edition from Dover Press
based on the 3rd edition or a hardcover facsimile from B&N based on
the first edition, etc -
while I consider facsimile editions as "separate editions" and not
just later printings, I would not "dignify" either of these
facsimiles with 4th or 5th edition, but simply describe them as
facsimile editions (with whatever additional description is necessary)
if a scholar/editor goes back to the original manuscript or early
editions, corrects some errors based on letters recently discovered
from the author lamenting the butchering of his book, etc, type is
reset with the changes, then you have a real 4th edition -
I don't think that a couple of facsimile editions in the middle
would push this 4th edition into 5 or 6th place (if for no other
reason than the fact that once a book is out of copyright EVERYONE
can make facsimile editions cheaply.... so it could be very difficult
to do a definitive count of the number of facsimiles)
Seems to me that "skirting the issue" is the right way to do it - the
facsimile reprint is neither a 2nd printing or a 2nd edition - I
would not use "first thus" either, unless it had new material -
although if I knew that a facsimile had had many printings , with
cover changes or other points, I might point out that this is the
first Dover Press edition, for example.
In my opinion, there is a big difference between saying a book had 2
editions and saying that a book only had one edition and a facsimile
reprint.....
Chris
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