3 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow first editions are documented on this shelf, from Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847) to The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 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 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.
- Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie — 1847 · William D. Ticknor & Co.First edition, first printing, issued in an edition of 1,000 copies. First-state text reads "Long" in the first line of page 61; the corrected second state reads "Lo" for "Long," a change that occurred accidentally during the print run. True first-edition sheets carry a four-page publisher's catalogue dated October 1, 1847, present at the front or rear depending on the copy, and the book collates as an octavo of…. Later Ticknor & Fields/Houghton Mifflin printings, and inclusion within the multi-volume "Poetical Works" or "Household Edition" collected sets, differ in binding and format and lack the October 1847 dated advertisements and the page-61 textual point described above.
- The Song of Hiawatha — 1855 · Ticknor and FieldsFirst edition, first issue, collates iv, 316pp plus [2] blank leaves and 11, [1]pp of publisher's advertisements at the rear. BAL 12112 records a set of first-issue textual readings on specific pages (including pages 27, 32, 39, 96, 268, and 278) that were altered in the stereotype plates for later printings within the same year. Bound in the publisher's original brown cloth, blind-stamped on the covers with gilt…. Numerous illustrated gift-book reprints of Hiawatha appeared from the 1890s onward with added colour plates or photogravures, and later Ticknor & Fields/Houghton Mifflin printings differ from the true first in advertisement dating and in the corrected textual points; these are not the 1855 first issue.
- The Courtship of Miles Standish — 1858 · Ticknor and FieldsFirst issue reads "treacherous" rather than "ruddy" on page 124, line 3. First-issue copies carry twelve pages of publisher's advertisements at the rear dated October 1858; copies with sixteen pages of advertisements dated November 1858 represent a later state from the same stereotype plates. Bound in brown ribbed cloth decorated in blind with the title in gilt on the spine; cited as BAL 12122. A London edition (W. Kent and Co.) also appeared in 1858, cataloged separately in the trade as BAL 12121; dealers generally treat the London printing as preceding this Ticknor and Fields Boston edition, so a copy should be checked for a Ticknor and Fields, Boston title page before the points above are applied. Later Ticknor & Fields/Houghton Mifflin resettings and inclusion in the collected "Poetical Works" lack the October-dated advertisement gathering and the "treacherous" textual point described above.
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