Why Do People Collect First Editions?

That's the question recently posed by the Cataloguer's Desk.

From the post...

First editions do exert a profound pull which reprints do not. Why? Primarily because a first edition is the physical manifestation of a particular moment in the life of a novel, and it can also reflect a significant time in the wider culture.

To begin with, writers often participate in the production of the first edition. They may make corrections and additions up to the last minute in cooperation with their publisher, and they might have a say in how a book is designed and who illustrates it. In one of the most famous examples, the original artwork commissioned for the dust jacket of The Great Gatsby in advance of publication influenced Fitzgerald’s ideas about the novel, and in August 1924 he wrote to the publisher, “For Christ’s sake don’t give anyone that jacket you’re saving for me. I’ve written it into the book.”

First editions also embody the relationship between a book and its readers. These were the first copies read by critics and the public, and they made or broke the authors’ reputations. John Keats was said to have died in part because of the bad reviews of Endymion, while the first editions of Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Darwin’s Origin of Species made their authors into household names overnight. Owning a first edition allows a collector to experience vicariously a book’s emergence on the literary scene.