2 Alfred Russel Wallace first editions are documented on this shelf, from The Malay Archipelago (1869) to Darwinism (1889). Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Alfred Russel Wallace title from later printings and book-club copies — the publisher and year to expect, the number-line or edition-statement conventions, and the tells that show up in online listings.

Identification only, per the house rule: no prices and no appraisals here. Checking a Alfred Russel Wallace copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.

The Malay Archipelago — 1869 · Macmillan and Co.The true first edition was published in spring 1869 in two octavo volumes, bound in original gilt-stamped green cloth, with publisher's advertisements dated December 1868 bound into volume I. A reprint explicitly marked 'Second Edition' on the title page, also in two volumes, followed later the same year; genuine first-edition copies carry no edition statement on the title page. The work recounts Wallace's eight…. Macmillan issued a reprint from reset type, with reduced line-spacing and marked as a second edition on the title page, later the same year (1869); the true first carries no edition statement and retains the December 1868 advertisement leaves in volume I. A reprint dated the same year, 1869, is explicitly labeled 'Second Edition' on its title page; true first-edition volumes carry no edition statement at all, which remains the simplest way to distinguish the two printings.
Darwinism — 1889 · Macmillan and Co.First edition, full title Darwinism: An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection with Some of Its Applications. Octavo, xvi, 494 pages plus 2 pages of publisher's advertisements at the rear, illustrated with a tissue-guarded portrait frontispiece of Wallace, a folding color map, and 37 text diagrams. Grew out of a series of lectures Wallace delivered in the United States in 1886-87 and coins the term 'pure….

More Nonfiction & Memoir shelves: Barbara W. Tuchman, Baruch Spinoza, Benjamin Franklin, Booker T. Washington, Brian Greene, C. Vann Woodward.

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