The Works of WSC
A guide to the Churchill canon
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Ronald I. Cohen
An edition consists of all the copies of a book printed from one setting of type (whether from printing plates, offsetting or other more modern techniques). All the printings from a particular typesetting are subsumed within the edition. Thus, copies from the first or second printing, on the one hand, or the eighteenth printing (even 20 years on) from the initial typesetting belong to the first edition. What collectors assume to be the "first edition" is technically the first printing of the first edition.
A printing or impression - the terms are interchangeable - consists of all the copies printed at one time, i.e., without removing the type or plates from the press. The first printing is usually the collector's desideratum of the first edition, although it may not be the author's definitive text. Consider, for example, the Silver Library edition (technically the "Second edition, Silver Library issue", since there was also a Colonial Library issue of the work) of The Story of the Malakand Field Force (Cohen A1.3.a), in which the egregious proofreading errors of the first edition were corrected, or the Cassell edition of The Second World War (Cohen A240.4), which reflected all of the Churchillian overtakes of final revises, etc.
A second printing will be just that - a printing - even though there may be some corrections or changes made to the text. Such changes will not amount to a new edition unless there is a substantial resetting of type. What amounts to "substantial" is debatable but, to provide an example close to home for the Churchill collector, none of the publisher-styled "editions" of the Thornton Butterworth The World Crisis (Cohen A31.2) are editions; they are only subsequent printings of the first edition. The last printing of Volume I (1911-1914), styled by the publisher "Third edition, fifth printing" is thus the "First British edition, Volume I, eighth printing" (A69.2(I).j) in my Bibliography.
The most misunderstood and most abused bibliographical terms are issue and state. In inaccurate hands, "first issue" and "first state" are used interchangeably to designate something "early" and, therefore, frquently expensive. Correctly applied, issue and state occur only within a single printing.
States result when the printed pages of some copies of a single printing are altered either during the course of printing or after the printing is completed. Stop-press correction of one or more words creates states: the first state with the original reading and the second state with the emended reading. The correction may also be performed by cancellation: removing a leaf and inserting an emended replacement leaf, which is called a "tip-in" or cancellans.
There can be no second state unless there is a first state. There can be no first state unless there is a second state.
Issues are created by an alteration of the pages - affecting the conditions of publication or sale - of some copies of a printing. Usually issues result from title-page alterations. The Colonial Library Savrola was published both with the Longmans Green title page for general colonial distribution (Cohen A3.3.a) and separately with the title page of Copp Clark for sale in Canada (Cohen A3.4). In the case of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned (Bruccoli A8.1), the presumption is that the prelims, or preliminary material (the first gathering of leaves), were printed once with the title page for Scribners and separately with the title page for Copp Clark; therefore, two issues resulted: an American issue and a Canadian issue - which may have been issued simultaneously.
In terms of the designation of priority, there can be no second issue without a first issue. There can be no first issue without a second issue. That being said, there may be simultaneous, but separate issues, as in the case of the American and Canadian issues of The Second World War (Cohen A240.1 and A240.2 respectively), both published on 21 June 1948.
In an unusual example, one finds both states and issues, resulting from textual correction. Hugh Martin's Battle (Cohen F40), which required the replacement of p. 12, is found in a first state (F40.1.a), with the legally offensive text on p. 12, in a second state (F40.1.b), with the leaf (pp. 11/12) that included the offensive text replaced by a cancellans, and in a new issue (F40.2), in which the re-set leaf is integral.
Binding variants--different cloths or different cloth colors or changes in the stamping--have no bearing on edition, printing, state, or issue. Binding variants are binding variants. It may be possible to determine the priority of a particular binding variant used for part of printing, but bindings have no necessary connection with text. Binding issues are possible--for example, parts of a printing may be bound in paper and cloth to create binding issues, as in the case of The People's Rights (Cohen A31). This term is potentially treacherous and should be applied with care.
A dust jacket--which may be more valuable than the book it accompanies--has no bearing on the edition, printing, state, or issue of the book. Note, though, that there may be new issues of jackets themselves, even where there has been but a single printing of the volume itself (but where sales have perhaps trickled over a period of time). See, for example, the case of the dust jackets wrapping the second (one-volume) edition of Lord Randolph Churchill (Cohen A17.4) or the British issue of the first edition of Stemming the Tide (Cohen A264.1). What is particularly troublesome is that there is no way to determine that the dust jacket now on a volume was always on that volume. Jackets should not be, but are occasionally, swapped. The description of a book and its dust jacket are independent of each other.
Ron Cohen is the author of A Bibliography of the Writings of Sir Winston Churchill (London and New York: Continuum, 2006)
