First Edition or Fine Edition?

[Climacus]

Given the option, which would you generally choose, first editions or fine editions? (First editions may be fine editions too, of course. But often they aren't.) Or are you indifferent?

Personally, I've never really understood first-edition allure. For my part, I agree with Edith Wharton's Mr. Selden (House of Mirth): 'I simply like to have good editions of the books I am fond of.'

Edit: You mustn't think that I agree with Selden in other ways.

[Climacus]

Well, it looks like scarcely anyone cares a fig either way. They're even too indifferent to click 'indifferent.' :wink5:

Anyway, I received an order from Folio Society today - a London-based publisher of fine books. Any other Folio members here?

[Whifflingpin]

Fine editions serve a decorative purpose, first editions might have rarity value. If I had to (or could afford to) make a choice I'd generally go with the Arts & Crafts dictum, "Do not have anything in your house that you don't know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." That would mean going for fine, rather than first. But if anyone wants to offer me a first edition of Castiglione's Book of the Courtier, I might stretch a point.

(I expect we'll soon have the crowd of Philistines who think that the content of the book is more important than its age or packaging.)

[mal4mac]

Cheapest edition - then I don't need to earn so much money and can spend more time reading... so library edition is best...

[billl]

For me, this is not an issue with classics (those'd be too expensive, and probably impossible to read comfortably). For modern literary stuff, I guess it doesn't matter to me. However, in the case of 20th-Century genre fiction (for me, mystery/espionage and sci-fi) I prefer to have the oldest paperback version that I can find. To be holding a Cold War thriller that was printed in the 50's or 60's complements the "time travel" nature of the experience, the way that the characters are living in a world of 747's and cars with no air-bags. Also, for me, it's interesting to see the style of art (and even fashion) that was used to appeal to readers of the day in the cover art (science fiction is particularly well-known for this, I guess). First edition is maybe a little bit more interesting, but not crucial--just having the art and age of the book reflect the time when it was being marketed as something "new"/contemporary.

[Desolation]

I don't know about others here, but I'm completely obsessive about which edition of a book I buy. For instance, I just sold all of my Faulkner and Fitzgerald books because I saw that they released very pretty new editions that I much prefer. And, on the opposite end, I'm trying to hunt down all the Beckett books I can before they're completely replaced by new editions that stick his face on the cover.

I'm a sucker for aesthetics, best quality translation, and parallelism (as in, I like to have matching editions for my collections of each author, in so far as possible).

[Climacus]

I don't know about others here, but I'm completely obsessive about which edition of a book I buy. For instance, I just sold all of my Faulkner and Fitzgerald books because I saw that they released very pretty new editions that I much prefer. And, on the opposite end, I'm trying to hunt down all the Beckett books I can before they're completely replaced by new editions that stick his face on the cover.

I'm a sucker for aesthetics, best quality translation, and parallelism (as in, I like to have matching editions for my collections of each author, in so far as possible).

Me too. Before buying I research translations - if necessary - and hunt for the nicest editions. Somehow the quality of the bookmaking changes my readership. That is, I can't help but respect a nicely-bound book. Silly, I know.

Not all books should be leather-bound and gilded of course. There's an American publisher, Easton Press, that specialises in fine editions. But they publish gold-gilded leather-bound things like Garfield: 30 Years of Laughs and Lasagna and Cars of the Sizzling '60s. The incongruity here is ludicrous.