I believe the first New Directions hard cover edition of Sartre’s Nausea came out in 1949. All of them that I can find online have title and copyright pages that look like my first two photos. I have an edition showing different title and copyright pages (pics 3 & 4). It was printed in England, not the USA. (Mine does not have a dust jacket.) Does anyone know what year it came out, or anything else about it?
Yes, with the "1949" I too assume that is the first edition by New Directions, published in London. But I'm also trying to figure out how long they were published in England before moving over to New York, and whether there is any overlap between the ones published in England and the subsequent New York printings. But maybe there's no way to know that. I have just learned from the New Directions website that: “[Identifying] First editions of early titles from New Directions require specific author bibliographies. First editions published from the late 1940s to 1969 have no additional printings listed on the copyright page. Binding variations can also be useful for first edition identification.” Speaking of binding variations, here are photos of the spine and front, first the New York binding, then the 1949 London binding (which was more elaborate).
I don't think it's possible to assume, from what I can see here, which is the first edition in English. The above quote from New Dimensions suggests that the only way to verify the editions is to find a thorough bibliography covering works written by Sartre. You can try looking online for one, and there might actually be one. It could take a bit of searching to find a full-text one online. You could try the catalog of the HathiTrust Digital Library (https://www.hathitrust.org/) and limit the search to only Full Text items. Many large research libraries contributed records there. Due to copyright, not everything is online there. Something that could be useful, if you live near a university, is to see what printed books they have in their catalog related to Sartre. Some bibliographies are going to cover all editions of works by an author. Others just cover the main ones. And some only cover works written about an author. Some are combinations of the above types.
@Figtree3 - No luck yet on that front, but. . . “The North-American publisher New Directions first issued Lloyd Alexander's translation in 1949 as part of its New Classics library . . . ” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nausea_(novel)#Translations So it looks as though the London and New York printings both may have come out in 1949. The London edition (dated 1949) does not reference New Directions' “New Classics“ series, which the NY version (undated) does.
