2 Ida B. Wells first editions are documented on this shelf, from Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases (1892) to A Red Record (1895) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Ida B. Wells 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 Ida B. Wells copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.

Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases — 1892 · New York Age PrintWells's first anti-lynching pamphlet was printed by the New York Age Print shop and published October 26, 1892, dedicated 'to the Afro-American women of New York and Brooklyn' who had raised funds for her at a Lyric Hall meeting on October 5, 1892. The first printing collates 24 pages (24 cm). Much of its text had first appeared in expanded form as Wells's front-page piece 'Exiled,' published in the New York Age…. Southern Horrors was reprinted in 1893 and 1894 as Wells continued her anti-lynching campaign; check later copies against the 24-page collation and the October 1892 New York Age Print imprint of the first issue, and note that most readers today encounter the text via 20th-century anthology reprints rather than a 19th-century pamphlet.
A Red Record — 1895 · Donohue & HenneberryThe first edition, subtitled 'Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynchings in the United States, 1892-1893-1894,' was printed in Chicago by Donohue & Henneberry in 1895 and collates 100 pages (25 cm). It opens with a letter of endorsement from Frederick Douglass beginning 'Dear Miss Wells: Let me give you thanks for your faithful paper on the lynch abomination now generally practiced against colored…. Most readers today encounter A Red Record through 20th-century anthology reprints, such as the Jacqueline Jones Royster edition Southern Horrors and Other Writings (1997); those composite modern texts are not the 1895 Donohue & Henneberry first edition.

More Nonfiction & Memoir shelves: Isaac Newton, Isabella L. Bird, James Gleick, Jared Diamond, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Joan Didion.

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