2 Fernando Pessoa first editions are documented on this shelf, from Mensagem (1934) to The Book of Disquiet (1982) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Fernando Pessoa 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 Fernando Pessoa copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.
- Mensagem — 1934 · Parceria António Maria Pereira, LisbonThe true first is Lisbon, Parceria António Maria Pereira, 1934: octavo (approximately 19.3 x 13.3 cm), collating 100, [2] pp., issued in the publisher's plain yellow printed wrappers, and containing the 44 poems. The Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal's copy (shelfmark RES-4431-P) collates 100, [2] pp. and confirms the Parceria A. M. Pereira imprint. The production point is the colophon: the sheets were composed and…. Portuguese is the original language and the Lisbon 1934 Parceria edition is the true and only first — this is the sole full-length Portuguese book Pessoa published in his lifetime, and it took the Antero de Quental prize in the year of issue. There is no UK or US edition of the period and therefore no precedence contest; English versions under the title 'Message' are much later translations. Only the Lisbon 1934…. No book-club edition is documented. The traps are later Portuguese trade editions under other imprints and modern collector/facsimile reissues (e.g. the Livraria Lello collector's edition), all of which are 'first thus' only. Identification rests on the Parceria António Maria Pereira title-page imprint together with the Editorial Império October 1934 printing statement; copies rebound in morocco frequently….
- The Book of Disquiet — 1982 · Edicoes Atica, LisbonTrue first: Edicoes Atica, Lisbon, 1982 — the posthumous editio princeps, 'Livro do Desassossego por Bernardo Soares,' in two volumes, organized with a preface by Jacinto do Prado Coelho and texts collected and transcribed by Maria Aliete Galhoz and Teresa Sobral Cunha (Pessoa died 1935; about 520 fragments assembled). English is the classic four-way tangle: FOUR competing translations all appeared in 1991 — 'The…. Portuguese true first is Atica 1982 (2 vols). No single English edition is 'the' first: the four 1991 translations issued near-simultaneously from four houses in two countries, and no bibliographic consensus establishes which physically appeared first — cite the specific translator/publisher rather than a blanket 'first English edition.' Note the title variant: Zenith's Carcanet edition is 'The Book of…. Zenith's later, fuller Penguin edition (2001/2002) and the Costa-translated 'Complete Edition' (ed. Jeronimo Pizarro, 2017) are separate later translations/editions, not reprints of the 1991 firsts. No book-club edition is a recognized point.
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