3 H. Rider Haggard first editions are documented on this shelf, from King Solomon's Mines (1885) to She: A History of Adventure (1887) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that H. Rider Haggard 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 H. Rider Haggard copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.
- King Solomon's Mines — 1885 · Cassell & CompanyPublished by Cassell & Company, London, in September 1885, in a first printing of 2,000 copies: 1,500 bound in Britain with publisher's advertisements dated '5.8.85' at the rear, and 500 sheets shipped unbound to Cassell's New York office and bound there without the terminal ads. The British-bound first issue is in original red cloth decoratively stamped in black on the upper board and spine, with the spine…. A corrected later issue followed within months (identifiable by October, November, or December 1885 dates in the rear advertisements, versus the first issue's '5.8.85'), and any copy with an 1886-dated title page is a later reprint; cheap juvenile reprint-house editions (Collins' Clear-Type Press, Thomas Nelson, and similar) use simplified bindings and postdate 1885 by decades.
- Allan Quatermain — 1887 · Longmans, Green, and Co.Published by Longmans, Green, and Co., London, on 1 July 1887, as a first trade printing of about 20,000 copies alongside a separate issue of 112 numbered large-paper copies. The ordinary first edition is bound in dark blue cloth, gilt-stamped on spine and cover with a decorative axe device, beveled boards, and floral endpapers. First-issue text carries 'Dongo' for 'Donyo' on page 17 and a misspelling,…. The 112 numbered large-paper copies form a separate, distinct issue printed alongside the ordinary trade first edition. Later Longmans 'new impression' printings correct the page-17 and map misprints and add the missing frontispiece footnote; cheap twentieth-century reprint-house bindings lack the axe-device gilt stamping entirely.
- She: A History of Adventure — 1887 · Longmans, Green, and Co.Published by Longmans, Green, and Co., London, on 1 January 1887. The uncorrected first-issue text carries the misprint 'Godness' (for 'Goodness') on the penultimate line of page 269, with further first-issue points at pages 59, 126, and 258. The first edition is bound in original dark blue cloth with beveled boards, titling and decoration in gilt on the spine and front cover, and two pages of publisher's…. Longmans' later 'New Edition' printings and colonial reprints correct the page-269 misprint and use plainer, non-beveled blue cloth boards; cheap illustrated reprint-house editions (Grosset & Dunlap and similar) postdate 1887 by decades.
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