2 George Gissing first editions are documented on this shelf, from New Grub Street (1891) to The Odd Women (1893) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that George Gissing 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 George Gissing copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.

New Grub Street — 1891 · Smith, Elder & Co.London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1891 — first edition, the three-decker, in a small printing reported at 500 copies (one ABAA description gives 500–750). Three volumes, octavo, collating [vi], 305, [1], [2, ads]; [vi], 316; [vi], 335, [1] pp., with half-titles present in all three volumes and publisher's advertisements at the rear of volume one. Bound in the original blue-green crackle-grain cloth stamped in black; a…. The Smith, Elder London three-decker of 1891 is the true first, confirming the census claim, and precedence is not contested: no American edition of 1891 is recorded in any source consulted. The census note that 'early US editions are later and abridged' needs qualifying on both counts. The American edition came much later — one source reports the first American issue appearing only after Gissing's death in…. Three-deckers of 1891 went overwhelmingly to the circulating libraries, so surviving copies are frequently ex-Mudie's or otherwise ex-library and rebound; original cloth in three volumes with half-titles intact is the thing actually being identified, and New Grub Street was the first of Gissing's books to reach a second impression, so a stated later impression is a real possibility. One-volume reprints and modern….
The Odd Women — 1893 · Lawrence & BullenFirst published in three volumes by Lawrence & Bullen, 16 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London, in 1893, near the end of the Victorian three-volume 'triple-decker' era, which collapsed within a few years after Mudie's and W. H. Smith's June 1894 ultimatum on library purchase terms. A genuine first edition must therefore be in three separate volumes bearing the Lawrence & Bullen imprint and the 1893 date; every…. Any one-volume edition, including the numerous later reprints, postdates the three-volume 1893 first; check specifically for the three-decker collation and the Lawrence & Bullen imprint.

More Literary Fiction (US) & Award Winners shelves: George Meredith, George Moore, George Saunders, George Washington Cable, Gertrude Stein, Gilbert Sorrentino.

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