15 Anthony Trollope first editions are documented on this shelf, from The Warden (1855) to The Duke's Children (1880) across 7 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Anthony Trollope 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.
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- The Warden — 1855 · Longman, Brown, Green, & LongmansSingle octavo volume, the first of the Barsetshire novels. First-issue identification rests on the inserted publisher's advertisement catalogue dated September 1854 (Sadleir's variety B), bound at the rear; brown publisher's cloth, blind-stamped with gilt spine lettering, and coated yellow endpapers. Half-title present. The standard reference is Sadleir 16-17. The UK Longman 1855 edition is the true first. Trollope's first enduring success and genuinely scarce in the original cloth. Later collected-edition and reset printings are not the first.
- Barchester Towers — 1857 · Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & RobertsThree octavo volumes with 1857 title pages and half-titles. Documented first-issue textual point: the misprint 'tattooed' for 'tabooed' at volume II, page 269, line 24. The earliest copies have brick-red endpapers and retain the publisher's advertisements, including the advertisement for The Warden in volume I (often later excised). Collation: Vol. I half-title, title, viii, 305 pp.; Vol. II title, iv, 299 pp.;…. The UK Longman 1857 three-decker is the true first. One-volume reprints and later resettings are not the first.
- Doctor Thorne — 1858 · Chapman and HallFirst edition, three volumes, with a 32-page publisher's catalogue dated April 1858 bound into volume I. Chapman and Hall printed only 750 copies of the first edition -- fewer than they had printed of either Barchester Towers or The Three Clerks -- making genuine first-edition sets scarcer than those companion titles; a second edition of 250 copies followed within three weeks in the same binding, so the dated….
- Framley Parsonage — 1861 · Smith, Elder & Co.First book edition, three volumes, collating 2-333; 318; 330pp., published in April 1861 following serialization in the Cornhill Magazine beginning in January 1860, illustrated with six plates by John Everett Millais. The first issue is identified by a misplaced quotation mark and comma around the first word of the seventeenth line on page 238 of volume III, a printer's error corrected in later printings. A…. Later printings show the corrected reading at page 238, line 17 of volume III, without the misplaced quotation mark and comma that mark the true first issue.
- Orley Farm — 1862 · Chapman and HallFirst edition in book form, two volumes, illustrated by John Everett Millais with 40 wood-engraved plates, following issue in the printed price monthly parts from March 1861 to October 1862. The two volumes were themselves published separately, about ten months apart, which dealers cite as one reason the bibliography of this title is unusually complex. Michael Sadleir's bibliography of Trollope identifies several….
- Rachel Ray — 1863 · Chapman and HallFirst edition, two volumes, of which Chapman and Hall's total print run of 3,000 copies was issued across six separate 1863 printings of roughly 500 copies each. Unlike the true first printing, which carries no edition statement at all on its title page, the later 1863 printings are explicitly numbered on the title page -- surviving copies are recorded reading 'Second Edition,' 'Fifth Edition,' and 'Sixth…. Rachel Ray was written on commission for serialization in the magazine Good Words, but editor Norman Macleod rejected the completed novel in mid-1863 as unsuitable for his religious readership after a rival paper attacked the magazine's Evangelical credentials; it was never serialized in any periodical. The Chapman and Hall two-volume edition of October 1863 is therefore the first appearance of the text in any…. Any copy whose title page carries a numbered edition statement such as 'Second Edition,' 'Fifth Edition,' or 'Sixth Edition' is one of the later 1863 Chapman and Hall printings rather than the true first printing, even though all six printings share the same year, publisher, and two-volume format.
- Can You Forgive Her? — 1864 · Chapman and HallFirst book edition in two volumes (volume I dated 1864, volume II dated 1865), following original publication in the printed price monthly parts from January 1864 to August 1865. Volume I is illustrated with a frontispiece and nineteen further plates by Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'), who drew the first twenty illustrations for the serial; volume II instead carries twenty plates by Miss E. Taylor of St Leonards,…. The English two-volume Chapman and Hall edition (1864-1865) precedes the American first edition from Harper and Brothers, New York, which did not appear until September 1865, after the second English volume.
- The Small House at Allington — 1864 · Smith, Elder & Co.First edition in book form in two volumes, London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1864, illustrated with eighteen plates by John Everett Millais (volume I: frontispiece plus nine plates; volume II: frontispiece plus seven plates). The first printing is identified by two textual points in volume I: the misprint 'hobbledehoya' at page 33, line 1, and page 70 mispaginated as '0.' A correct copy retains the half-title in volume…. The Smith, Elder two-volume edition is the true first, following serialization in the Cornhill Magazine (September 1862-April 1864); it is the fifth of the Barsetshire novels. A US edition (Harper & Brothers) also appeared in 1864, but the London two-volume edition is the true first. Original cloth is scarce and the book is frequently rebound. Later one-volume Smith, Elder and Chapman & Hall reprintings lack the two first-printing points ('hobbledehoya' and the '0' pagination) and are not the first edition.
- The Last Chronicle of Barset — 1867 · Smith, Elder and Co.First book edition in two volumes (issued March and July 1867), following original publication in thirty-two weekly sixpenny parts from 1 December 1866 to 6 July 1867, illustrated with thirty-two full-page plates and thirty-two in-text vignettes by George H. Thomas. Both volumes carry 'Illustrations by George H. Thomas' on the title page and 'The right of Translation is reserved' on the title verso. Sadleir…. The second edition is distinguished by an imperfect 'D' on page 157 of volume I and by the reading 'Toogood' in place of 'Crawley' at line 21 of page 298 in volume II.
- Phineas Finn, the Irish Member — 1869 · Virtue and Co.First edition, two volumes, octavo, paginated vi,[ii],320; vi,[ii],328, published March 1869 with twenty tissue-guarded wood-engraved plates by John Everett Millais, one per original monthly installment of the serialization in Saint Paul's Magazine. Bound in publisher's original green cloth stamped 'Virtue and Co.' at the foot of the spine, with gilt lettering and overall blind decoration to upper covers and…. The English Virtue and Co. edition, published in two volumes in March 1869, precedes the American edition from Harper and Brothers, whose title page is dated 1868 but which was not actually issued until several months after the London publication. The American edition is bound in brown rather than green cloth and includes only seventeen of Millais's plates; its first issue also omits Millais's name from the title page, unlike the true English first edition, which credits him prominently.
- The Eustace Diamonds — 1873 · Chapman and HallFirst UK book edition in three volumes; the set was released in December 1872, though the title pages of all three volumes carry the date 1873, and it followed an American Harper single-volume edition issued two months earlier in October 1872. Sadleir describes the standard publisher's binding as salmon-brown sand-grained cloth with gilt-lettered spines, with a scarcer variant recorded in green embossed cloth…. The American Harper edition (one volume, October 1872) precedes the English three-volume Chapman and Hall edition by about two months; although the London set was released in December 1872, its title pages read 1873, and it remains the standard first edition sought by collectors of the Palliser series.
- Phineas Redux — 1874 · Chapman & HallTrue first published by Chapman & Hall, London, title-dated 1874 but actually issued December 1873, in two octavo volumes. First-issue points: original green cloth blocked in black with a gilt central device in a botanical panel, and gilt spine lettering; half-titles present in both volumes; 24 wood-engraved plates after Frank Holl (carried over from the novel's serialization in The Graphic, July 1873 to January…. The London Chapman & Hall two-volume issue is the true first edition and precedes any American issue; it fills the Palliser sequence between Phineas Finn and The Prime Minister. English original, so there is no translation-precedence question. Reprint trap: Routledge later reprinted the novel in one volume — distinguish by continuous pagination and the absence of the Chapman & Hall imprint and the Holl plates. Oxford World's Classics and Trollope Society issues are modern reprints, not the first.
- The Way We Live Now — 1874 · Chapman and HallThe true first edition is the issue in twenty monthly parts, Chapman and Hall, London, February 1874 – September 1875, catalogued as "first edition in the original monthly parts" by Bonhams, Christie's and Forum Auctions and collated at Sadleir 44. Points: octavo parts in the original blue printed pictorial wrappers, the front wrapper designed around a globe on which Father Time sits dejectedly amid scenes from…. The census claim of "Chapman & Hall 1875" names only the book form and understates the case. The twenty monthly parts (Chapman and Hall, February 1874 – September 1875) precede and are the first edition; the two-volume book followed in June 1875 — released ahead of the serial's own conclusion because the parts were selling badly. Both are collected, the parts being the senior and far scarcer object; the Trollope…. No book-club issue is possible for an 1875 Trollope; the tells are remainder and reprint issues. Roughly eight months after book publication Chatto & Windus bought up the remaining Chapman and Hall sheets and issued them under a Chatto & Windus title page and binding — the same printed sheets, but not the first edition, and the substituted title page is the tell. Chapman and Hall separately offered the two….
- The Prime Minister — 1876 · Chapman and HallFirst edition, four volumes, octavo, in original cloth, published following issue in eight monthly the printed price parts from November 1875 to June 1876. A recorded variant of the first edition lacks volume numbers on the title pages of the individual volumes -- a checkable point distinguishing that variant from the standard numbered issue. Cited as Sadleir 45 and Trollope Society Catalogue 52.
- The Duke's Children — 1880 · Chapman & HallTrue first published by Chapman & Hall, London, 1880, in three octavo volumes (approx. 190 x 125 mm), the concluding Palliser novel. First-issue points: original dark blue-green publisher's cloth with a blocked design to the front boards and gilt spine lettering (title, author, publisher); half-titles present in all three volumes; publisher's advertisements bound at the end of Volume III. Approximate pagination…. The London Chapman & Hall 1880 three-decker is the true first; the American edition (Harper & Brothers, New York, 1880, per the census note) followed and is secondary. Important: the 1880 text is Trollope's own contractual abridgement (he cut roughly a quarter, about 65,000 words); the restored full-length text ('The Duke's Children Complete') did not appear until 2015, so the 1880 three-decker remains the true…. First-thus trap: The Folio Society's 2015 'Complete' edition (restored from the Beinecke manuscript by Steven Amarnick, limited to 1,980 copies, later trade reprints) is the first unabridged text but is a modern reprint, not the 1880 first. Oxford and Trollope Society editions are reprints.
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