2 Anne McCaffrey first editions are documented on this shelf, from Dragonflight (1968) to The White Dragon (1978) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Anne McCaffrey 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 Anne McCaffrey copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.

Dragonflight — 1968 · Ballantine BooksThe true first of the complete novel is the Ballantine mass-market paperback original of July 1968, catalogue number U6124, 309 pp, in pictorial wrappers — no hardcover precedes it. The first printing states "First Printing: July, 1968" on the copyright page and lists no later printing; there is no number line, and any added printing notice or a later Ballantine number (the second US paperback carries…. US paperback original (Ballantine, July 1968) is the true first; the hardcovers all follow it. The first UK hardcover is Rapp & Whiting (London), jacket art by Lawrence Edwards — and here the sources conflict: library cataloguing dates it 1969 (Open Library, and the British National Bibliography note carried on the 1970 Corgi reprint reads "Originally published, New York, Ballantine... London, Rapp & Whiting,…. The 1978 Del Rey hardcover with Michael Whelan's cover art is the copy most often mistaken for a first — it is a later edition by any definition, a decade after publication, and is not a first in any sense. The Corgi (London, 1970) paperback and all later Ballantine/Del Rey printings are reprints. Later Ballantine paperback printings retain the U6124-era text but add printing notices to the copyright page. No….
The White Dragon — 1978 · Del Rey / Ballantine Books, New YorkThe first printing states "First Edition: June 1978" on the copyright page with no further printings listed beneath it. Bound in cloth-backed boards — cream/tan paper boards with a blue cloth spine strip lettered in silver. Jacket art by Michael Whelan, depicting Ruth the white dragon. The first edition contains a two-page map of Pern and a seventeen-page "Dragondex" glossary of peoples and terms. Issued in a…. The US Del Rey/Ballantine first of June 1978 is the true first of the complete novel. It is also the first Pern hardcover original, but only in the specific sense of "hardcover original": Dragonflight (Ballantine, 1968) and Dragonquest (Ballantine, 1971) were both paperback originals whose hardcovers came later and from other houses (Dragonflight in the UK from Rapp & Whiting, 1968, and in the US from Walker &…. Book-club printings of the 1978 Del Rey hardcover are the common trap and are told by the absence of the "First Edition: June 1978" line on the copyright page, a blind-stamped device at the lower rear board, no price at the jacket flap, a smaller trim than the trade issue, and noticeably lighter/cheaper boards. Later Del Rey hardcover printings simply add printing statements below the June 1978 line.

More Literary Fiction (US) & Award Winners shelves: Anne Rice, Anne Tyler, Annie Proulx, Anthony Burgess, Anthony Doerr, Anthony Hope.

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