Surely a facsimile reprint is just that - a facsimile reprint. It is not
another issue or another state. That's what facsimile means. Of course it
likely has additional prelims so that makes it something else altogether.
Of course there is a further problem - in 1980 Nova Pacifica of Wellington
NZ produced a sumptuous facsimile reprint - so described on the
title-pages - of the first and only edition of The Zoology of the Beagle
from the copy in the library of Royal Society of New Zealand. But there are
hand-coloured plates in the original - for example Gould's description of
the birds is illustrated with plates hand coloured by Mrs. Gould. And each
copy varies ever so slightly - you only know that if you've checked out
several side-by-side! So if another publisher produced a set of The Zoology
based on, say, the copy at the University of South Carolina or the copy at
the University of Chicago it would be a facsimile reprint of that copy. How
would you describe that hypothetical but totally possible book in relation
to the one published by Nova Pacifica?
Bye for now.
Michèle
Michèle Kohler
C.C. Kohler, Antiquarian Booksellers
cornflwr@cornflwr.demon.co.uk
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Volk" <cvolk@BOOKFEVER.COM>
To: <EXLIBRIS@MAIL.ECW.NAME>
Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 3:37 PM
Subject: Re: [EXLIBRIS] Second edition or second printing
> 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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