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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;2manybooks, post: 9961506, member: 8267&quot;]I spoke to my partner, a bookseller for 41 years, about this issue. Here is his reply - </p><p><br /></p><p>Hello. 2manycats here, using 2manybooks account because mine is lost.</p><p><br /></p><p>I AM a book expert. Even today, many books do not say &quot;first edition&quot; or &quot;first printing&quot; when they are. There are several vital reference books devoted to methods used by various publishers at various times to indicate first printings. </p><p><br /></p><p>In the early nineteenth century, in the era of hand-set type, later printings were uncommon, and would usually - usually - be noted as &quot;second edition&quot; or whichever, on the title page. Type would be reset for each edition, which would allow errors to creep in, which is one reason the interest in first editions developed - the first edition was most closely supervised by the author, and therefore the most accurate.</p><p><br /></p><p>It is a big job to set an entire book in type, and mistakes get made. Sometimes you notice errors while you&#039;re printing, and correct the error while the type is still in the press. This results in what we call a &quot;state&quot;, in which some copies in a printing can be identified as earlier because they still have the error, but they&#039;re all still part of the same printing.</p><p><br /></p><p>Sometimes, though, you don&#039;t notice the error until the book is finished and the type distributed and put away. Then, because it&#039;s not a trivial job to reprint a page - you&#039;d actually have to reprint, depending on the size of the book, four or eight pages, not to mention rebinding. So it&#039;s much easier to print a single &#039;errata&#039; page, listing the errors, and bind or paste that in to finished books. Even later errors may be corrected by an &#039;errata slip&#039; which is just a loose sheet laid into a book.</p><p><br /></p><p>It is possible that an errata page corrects errors that were corrected in some later copies of a book - or the errata page itself could have an error!</p><p><br /></p><p>Is is not uncommon to see second editions brag that they are &#039;revised and corrected&#039;, eliminating the errata page that might have been in the first edition. It is NOT the case that an errata page indicates a later edition, just that some errors were noticed before the book was published.</p><p><br /></p><p>In the case of this book, a regional poet of no particular repute has coaxed a local printer to publish his book. Noting that there are no other printing dates in copies held by British libraries, it&#039;s highly unlikely that there were any other printings, let alone editions. If the book provides an unusual or valuable insight into early nineteenth century life, or we now know the author to have a significant association (was he a friend of Jane Austen, say), it may now be of considerable interest. If it&#039;s just a book of Cornish verse, it may only be of interest to local collectors. </p><p><br /></p><p>There&#039;s not much point worrying about the edition of such a book. It appears to be scarce enough that ANY edition would be of value to a collector, IF there are any collectors. So the question becomes not about the book, but about the author and the content. Is there anything there out of the ordinary? A question less easily answered.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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