Question regarding manuscript editions

Hi, I hope I'm posting this in the appropriate forum. I've been thinking of adding a manuscript edition or two to my small-but-growing collection of books by my favorite historic authors. During my browsing, I've noticed that there can sometimes be a wide range of bindings when it comes to copies of a particular manuscript edition of a book (or volume of books), everything from eloquent leather-bound covers with gilt lettering, to more "mundane" cloth covers with minimal decoration and markings other than the title on the spine. (And of course there is a corresponding difference in price between the various levels of bindings.) Can anyone tell me if this was a common thing for early-1900's publishers to do with manuscript editions? Thanks for any insight!

 

I don't know what you mean by manuscript editions. Manuscript facsimiles?

To me, the manuscript is what the author writes and what the publisher uses to produce the book. Beyond that there are limited editions, trade editions, commemorative editions... it goes on and on.

It's not unusual for books to appear in a variety of editions, some fancier than others.

 

My rudimentary understanding is that a manuscript edition, when there was one, is the very first publishing of an author's work, transcribed word-for-word from the author's submission without much in the way of edits, and that the "official" first edition is the next printing after the publisher reworks any typos, format and grammar issues for a more polished book. I'm assuming that not every literary work necessarily has a manuscript edition. Many of the manuscript editions I've seen on reputable booksellers' sites include a leaf from the author's actual hand-written manuscript, affixed to a tipped-in or original page (which is the part that intrigues me about these particular editions). What puzzled me though, while looking at numbered manuscript editions of the ten-volume "The Writings of John Muir" for example, there was quite a range of bindings produced, with leather-bound gilt-adorned sets fetching upwards of $15,000, and more austere cloth-covered sets going for less than $2000. It just seemed like a lot of work for a publisher to go through, offering different levels of bindings for one particular edition, but maybe that's just how they did things in the good old days.

 

A collection of letters, or diaries, might fill that definition, but for a collection of published works, the editing would already have been done.

In the case of letters or diaries, there's very often an opening essay and/or annotations that are scrupulously edited.

Apart from that, a lot of books have been printed in deluxe editions that have features not to be found in the more prosaic trade editions. Deluxe editions might be limited (there can be limited editions of limited editions), autographed, contain special illustrations or genuine manuscript samples, use finer paper, have finer bindings. If you want the nuts and bolts, the trade edition will do. If you want the bells and whistles...

I talked about a book on another thread: Eighteenth Century Color Prints. I have the second edition, 1906, unillustrated. The first edition (1900) was larger format, contained b&w illustrations and one color print (a re-strike, I think). There was also a very limited special edition that contained a full suite of color prints.

I have a book called Peter Carl Faberge, published in 1949.
Here's what it says inside:


Mine is the Library Edition. Doesn't say how many copies there are altogether.

A lot of snobbery involved. If you are going to produce a book targeting a limited market, you might want to produce a carriage trade edition as well as something for the hoi poloi. Whatever you produce, you'll want to make a profit and more than one type of printing might be necessary to accomplish that.

Another instance where you might read an unedited manuscript would be a privately printed book, or a vanity press book, where the author self-publishes.

 

Welcome to the forum, DonZ.

 

This had got me thinking: I wonder what the editorial stance is on things like poetry, or sermons.

 

I've been unable to find an official definition of "manuscript edition" so far. What these so far look like to me are nice, therefore special, editions of an author's collected works, or sometimes just one work, that includes a facsimile of part of a manuscript, as you described. I will do a little more looking. One thing that is clear from the John Muir set that you mentioned that is that it is not the very first publishing of his work. It might possibly be the first time the works were collected all in one place. My theory is that the Muir and Thoreau collected works that are called manuscript editions were probably always expensive. So far I have not verified that. Will be back later with more.

 

And this one is a different sort of thing called a "manuscript edition." A facsimile publication of the manuscript of A Christmas Carol that is in the collection of the Morgan Library in New York City. http://books.wwnorton.com/books/A-Christmas-Carol-The-Original-Manuscript-Edition/

So there is obviously more than one way this term has been used.

I found that Internet Archive has a digitized version of the John Muir edition. This page describes its contents.

https://archive.org/details/writingsjohnmui01badgoog

One more thing, and then I'll stop for a while. You asked about the bindings... it would not be unusual for more than one binding to be used, and for the sets to be sold for different prices. One of the Muir set I saw for sale seemed to indicate that it was a limited edition of 750 copies.

 

Thanks for the welcome and all of the responses so far; the info has been very helpful. And Figtree3 you are correct; the individual volumes contained in the John Muir "Writings" collection had all been published previously as stand-alone books, and this 10-volume collection was limited to 750 copies for the first edition. I believe there were at least a couple of subsequent editions, including a "Sierra Club" edition.

I ended up acquiring a numbered first edition "manuscript" set (263/750) which seems to fit the "library edition" description as far as bindings go, and thus was a lot less expensive than ones which were produced with higher-end bindings and such. The set happened to contain a leaf from Muir's manuscript describing a species of pine tree which particularly resonated with me, so I lucked out relatively speaking, price-wise. Good to know about the publishers' practice of offering different bindings; I was wondering if that was common. ​

 

It's great that you got what you wanted and that it included a bit of original manuscript that means something to you. If these books were published in a trade edition, such a thing would not (could not) have been included.

Reminds me of a Simpsons episode where Bart sends away for an original Itchy and Scratchy animation cell and receives a cell that shows only an arm. "Original" need not mean "consequential".

On states of publication that are out there: here's another oddity. This is a review copy. Review copies are a small pre-publication of a book distributed to critics. Despite the small number printed, and the fact that they predate official release of the book, they're usually less expensive than first editions because First Edition gets all the cachet.