3 Henry James first editions are documented on this shelf, from The Portrait of a Lady (1881) to The Turn of the Screw (1898) across 3 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Henry James 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.
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- The Portrait of a Lady — 1881 · Macmillan and Co.The London first edition (Macmillan, November 1881, three volumes) preceded the American; the American first edition (Houghton, Mifflin) was released November 16, 1881, but carries '1882' on the title page. First-issue American sheets show 'Copyright 1881.' on the copyright page, the date '1882' followed by a period on the title page, and no publisher's advertisements bound in at the rear (later printings added…. The Macmillan London three-volume edition of November 1881 is the true first edition, preceding the Houghton, Mifflin one-volume Boston edition, which itself is dated 1882 on its title page despite appearing in November 1881.
- The Bostonians — 1886 · Macmillan and Co.The British first edition, three volumes, published February 16, 1886, limited to 500 copies, is bound in dark blue-green fine-grained cloth with black rules to the boards and gilt-and-black spine lettering, with brown coated endpapers; terminal publisher's advertisements appear in volumes two and three only. A key issue point is a running head on page 31 of volume one mistakenly reading chapter 'II' instead of…. The Macmillan London three-volume edition of February 1886 has precedence over the Macmillan New York one-volume edition of May 1886.
- The Turn of the Screw — 1898 · Macmillan and Co.The novella first appeared in book form within the two-story collection The Two Magics, published almost simultaneously in October 1898 by Macmillan and Co. in New York and William Heinemann in London, with the two printings textually very close. The Heinemann London edition, limited to 1,500 copies including colonial and export copies, is bound in decorated blue cloth with four irises stamped in blind on the…. Bibliographers differ on strict priority between the near-simultaneous October 1898 Macmillan (New York) and Heinemann (London) printings of The Two Magics; both are treated as first editions of their respective countries, and no definitive consensus fixes which imprint actually reached the public first. Twentieth-century single-volume "Turn of the Screw only" editions separate the novella from its original companion piece, Covering End, and are later, differently structured books unconnected to the 1898 Two Magics first edition.
More Literary Fiction (US) & Award Winners shelves: Henry Miller, Herman Melville, Herman Wouk, Hermann Hesse, Hilary Mantel, Hunter S. Thompson.
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