Gary Snyder First Editions

• Riprap — 1959 · Origin PressOrigin Press (Ashland, MA; printed in Japan); one of 500 copies designed and edited by Cid Corman; printed rectos only on folded sheets; blue paste-paper wrappers, stab-stitched Japanese style, with a paper label on the upper cover. True first; Snyder's first book, printed in Japan. Very scarce. No book club edition; the later 'Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems' (Four Seasons Foundation, 1965) is an enlarged reissue, not the first appearance.
• Myths & Texts — 1960 · Totem PressFirst edition in stapled pictorial wrappers, New York, 1960, under the Totem Press imprint in association with Corinth Books; the volume was recommended into the Corinth list by LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) for publisher Ted Wilentz. It gathers the three sequences 'Logging,' 'Hunting,' and 'Burning.' First-issue points, per Katherine McNeil's 'Gary Snyder: A Bibliography,' are the publisher's name and address…. The true first is the 1960 Totem Press / Corinth Books wrappered original in stapled wrappers. There is no book club edition; the New Directions edition (1978) is a later reset reprint, not the first. Later printings within the wrappered form can be distinguished by the McNeil points (copyright-page imprint detail, wrapper finish, and front-cover printing).
• Riprap & Cold Mountain Poems — 1965 · Four Seasons FoundationWrappers, issued as 'Writing 7' in the Four Seasons series; dark brown stapled wrappers. First-issue points: no price printed on the rear wrapper and no date on the title page. Adds Snyder's Han Shan 'Cold Mountain' translations to the earlier Riprap text. First thus (enlarged), 1965 Four Seasons Foundation; distinct from the 1959 Origin Press Riprap. No book club edition.
• Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems — 1965 · Four Seasons FoundationFour Seasons Foundation (San Francisco/Berkeley), Writing series number 7, edited by Donald Allen; stapled printed wrappers; first-issue points are no price printed on the rear wrapper and no date printed on the title page. Adds Snyder's Han-shan 'Cold Mountain' translations to the earlier Riprap text. First combined edition (first appearance of Riprap together with the Cold Mountain Poems). Riprap alone was first published by Origin Press in Japan in 1959; the Cold Mountain translations had previously appeared only in Evergreen Review. No book-club edition; distinguish this 1965 combined first from the 1959 Riprap first and from later reprints that add a price or date.
• Six Sections from Mountains and Rivers Without End — 1965 · Four Seasons FoundationFirst edition in stapled printed wrappers, San Francisco/Bolinas 1965, issued as Writing 9 in the Four Seasons Foundation series. An expanded edition with an added (Plus One) section followed in 1970; the 1965 issue contains the original six sections. True first is the 1965 Four Seasons Foundation wrappered original (Writing 9). No book club edition.
• A Range of Poems — 1966 · Fulcrum PressFirst UK edition, London, bound in chocolate-brown cloth with a plain brown paper dust jacket printed in black; the title page states First Edition March 1966. Photographic frontispiece of the author; a tipped-in errata slip is present on the last leaf. Roughly 500 copies of the first issue were printed. This collected volume gathers Riprap, Cold Mountain, and Myths & Texts with early selections and had no…. UK Fulcrum Press first edition (March 1966); no simultaneous or precedent American edition of this collection. No book club edition.
• The Back Country — 1968 · New DirectionsNew Directions first US edition, 1968, first printing so stated; issued in cloth and in wrappers. The London Fulcrum Press hardcover (1967, beige cloth) precedes it; the four-section structure (Western mountain country; Japan; India; return to the West) is the same, but the US New Directions edition adds further poems and a section of Miyazawa Kenji translations not in the Fulcrum text, so contents differ. The true first is the UK Fulcrum Press edition (London, 1967); the US New Directions edition (1968) follows and is textually expanded. Which is 'wanted' depends on the goal: Fulcrum for absolute priority, New Directions for the fuller authorized text. No book-club edition is the issue here. The real crux is UK Fulcrum (1967, true first) vs US New Directions (1968, expanded), and within New Directions, cloth vs wrappers.
• Earth House Hold — 1969 · New DirectionsNew Directions first edition, New York 1969, subtitle Technical Notes & Queries to Fellow Dharma Revolutionaries; collected prose, essays, and journals. Issued clothbound (yellow cloth lettered in black on the spine) in a black-printed dust jacket. Also published as a New Directions Paperbook; the clothbound is the collected first. True first US edition (Snyder's first prose collection), New Directions 1969. No book club edition; the clothbound issue is the collected first.
• Regarding Wave — 1970 · New DirectionsNew Directions trade first edition, New York 1970, issued in cloth and in wrappers. This full-length trade edition is preceded by a Windhover Press limited edition of 1969 (Iowa City), which contained a smaller selection of the Regarding Wave poems. The true first appearance in book form is the Windhover Press limited edition of 1969 (limited, signed, wine cloth, no jacket, printed on handmade paper), which carries a partial selection; the complete work first appeared in the New Directions trade edition of 1970. Note the precedence carefully. No book club edition.
• Turtle Island — 1974 · New DirectionsNew Directions first edition, 1974, first printing so stated; issued simultaneously in cloth (chartreuse/green cloth boards, stamped spine) and as a New Directions Paperbook. Roughly 2,000 hardcover copies. Won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; copies predating the win lack any Pulitzer sticker. The cloth hardcover in dust jacket is the collector's first. US true first and Pulitzer winner. Distinguish the scarcer cloth hardcover from the simultaneously issued, far more common paperbook. No book-club edition. The crux is the cloth hardcover first vs the simultaneous New Directions Paperbook.
• The Old Ways — 1977 · City Lights BooksFirst edition, a paperback original in glossy pictorial wrappers, City Lights Books, San Francisco 1977; 96 pages, illustrated by Tom Pohrt. Collects six essays: "The Yogin and the Philosopher," "The Politics of Ethnopoetics," "North Beach," "The Dharma Eye of D.A. Levy," "Re-inhabitation," and "The Incredible Survival of Coyote." No clothbound issue. True first is the 1977 City Lights wrappered original (paperback original; no hardcover was issued). Not part of the Pocket Poets series, which is verse rather than essays. No book-club edition; issued in wrappers, so no hardcover trade first to distinguish.
• The Real Work: Interviews & Talks 1964-1979 — 1980 · New DirectionsNew Directions first edition, New York 1980, edited with an introduction by William Scott McLean. Issued simultaneously clothbound (green cloth, gilt-stamped spine, photo-illustrated dust jacket) and as New Directions Paperbook 499. The clothbound copy is the collected first. True first is the 1980 New Directions edition; the clothbound issue, published simultaneously with the paperbook, is the collected first. No book club edition.
• Axe Handles — 1983 · North Point PressNorth Point Press first edition, San Francisco, 1983; poems. Issued simultaneously in two forms: a clothbound hardcover in dust jacket (ISBN 0-86547-119-3) and a wrappered softcover (ISBN 0-86547-120-7). The cloth-in-jacket is the collected hardcover first; some hardcover copies are found signed by Snyder on the title page. Snyder's first poetry collection following his 1975 Pulitzer for Turtle Island. True first US edition of the poems; the clothbound hardcover in jacket (ISBN 0-86547-119-3) is the collected first, issued simultaneously with the wrappered softcover (ISBN 0-86547-120-7). No book club edition; distinguish the two simultaneous first-edition issues by binding and ISBN, with the cloth-in-jacket the preferred collected form.
• Passage Through India — 1983 · Grey Fox PressGrey Fox Press, San Francisco, 1983. Issued in two states: a scarce hardcover in tan/beige cloth with gilt spine lettering, no dust jacket as issued, in a very small printing, and a wrappered issue. Illustrated with Snyder's own black-and-white photographs. Travel prose based on his 1962 India journey with Ginsberg, Orlovsky, and Kyger. True first is the 1983 Grey Fox publication. The collected form is the scarce cloth hardcover; a simultaneous wrappered issue also exists. No book club edition.
• Left Out in the Rain: New Poems 1947-1985 — 1986 · North Point PressNorth Point Press (Berkeley) first printing, 1986; 209 pages. The cloth issue (ISBN 0-86547-268-8) is green cloth with gilt spine titling in an illustrated dust jacket; issued simultaneously in a pictorial stiff-wraps softcover (ISBN 0-86547-267-X). Collects poems not previously gathered in book form, many from Snyder's years in Japan. True first is the 1986 North Point issue; the green cloth in jacket is the collected hardcover form, issued alongside the pictorial wrappers. No book club edition.
• The Practice of the Wild — 1990 · North Point PressNorth Point Press first printing, San Francisco, 1990. Issued simultaneously in maroon cloth with gilt spine lettering in a dust jacket (retaining the printed jacket price) and in dark purple glossy wrappers; the two share the 1990 North Point setting. Nine essays, 190 pages. The clothbound issue carries ISBN 0-86547-453-2 and the wrappers issue 0-86547-454-0. True first US edition; the cloth in jacket is the collected hardcover form of the simultaneous North Point issue. No book club edition; the North Point cloth in jacket is the collected first. Later Farrar, Straus/North Point softcover printings (sixth printing and beyond) are reprints, not the first.
• No Nature: New and Selected Poems — 1992 · Pantheon BooksPantheon Books (Random House), 1992. Quarter brown cloth over blue paper boards, gilt lettering, in dust jacket. First printing indicated by the number line reading down to 1 on the copyright page together with the stated First Edition; a line beginning at 2 denotes a later printing. First-issue jacket carries a printed price at the front flap. Trade first is the 1992 Pantheon hardcover; on this Random House-family imprint the copyright-page number line is the arbiter of printing. No book club edition.
• Mountains and Rivers Without End — 1996 · CounterpointCounterpoint, Washington, D.C., 1996, first printing with the number line ending in 1. Quarter red cloth over green paper boards, gilt lettering, pictorial endpapers, in dust jacket. The completed long poem. A separate signed limited edition of 150 copies also exists. True first US edition of the completed work; the trade first is the quarter-cloth Counterpoint hardcover in jacket. No book club edition of concern.

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