2 Bret Easton Ellis first editions are documented on this shelf, from Less Than Zero (1985) to American Psycho (1991) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Bret Easton Ellis 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 Bret Easton Ellis copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.

Less Than Zero — 1985 · Simon & SchusterFirst edition, first printing has a complete number line ending in 1 on the copyright page. Quarter cloth over black paper-covered boards; dust jacket with its printed price, unclipped; 208 pp. ISBN 0-671-54329-6. The US Simon & Schuster first is the true first, preceding the UK Picador edition (1986). Ellis's debut, written while a Bennington student. The Vintage Contemporaries paperback (1986 onward) and later printings are not the first. A number line lacking 1 indicates a later printing.
American Psycho — 1991 · Vintage ContemporariesPaperback original — there is no jacket, the printed wrapper is the binding. Vintage Contemporaries, New York, March 1991; ISBN 0-679-73577-1; 399 pp. First printing: the last line of the copyright page carries a full descending number line, 10 down to 1, double-spaced; the wrapper shows the original Vintage colophon and the minimalist original design. Later-printing tells: a number line sequenced odds-to-evens…. TRUE FIRST IS THE US PAPERBACK ORIGINAL — census claim confirmed. Simon & Schuster had the novel under contract for conventional hardcover publication and cancelled roughly three months before release over the book's content; Vintage acquired it and issued it as a Vintage Contemporaries trade paperback original in March 1991, so no American hardcover first edition exists. Picador (London) published the first UK…. No book-club edition documented. The functional equivalents here are later Vintage printings passed as firsts: identify them by the odds-to-evens or letter-bearing number line, the revised rear-cover price, the later Vintage logo, and back-matter advertising titles published after 1991.

More Nature, Western & Americana shelves: Charles F. Lummis, Charles Portis, Conrad Richter, David Halberstam, Edward Abbey, Francis Parkman.

← All authors · All genres · part of the First-Edition Identification resource.