2 J.G. Farrell first editions are documented on this shelf, from Troubles (1970) to The Siege of Krishnapur (1973) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that J.G. Farrell 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 J.G. Farrell copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.

Troubles — 1970 · Jonathan CapeFirst published by Jonathan Cape, London, in 1970; the first impression is an octavo of 446 pages, approximately 197 x 128mm, bound in publisher's grey cloth boards with the spine lettered in gilt, and carries ISBN 0224619004. Renaissance Books records the top edges as dyed red — this is single-sourced among the catalogues consulted, and the dye is fugitive and very commonly faded to near-invisible, so a faded…. Jonathan Cape (London), 1970, is the true first and the first volume of the Empire Trilogy; it took the Faber Memorial Prize and, retrospectively, the 2010 'Lost Man Booker Prize' for 1970. Alfred A. Knopf issued the first American edition in New York, with a jacket designed and illustrated by Wendell Minor. The American date is genuinely muddled and the census claim of 'US Knopf 1971' is not established: dealers…. No book-club edition of the Cape first is documented in the sources consulted. The reprint tell to watch is a later Cape impression retaining the same 1970 title-page date — a stated impression line on the verso separates these from the first. Copies offered under the Cape imprint with later dates on the title page are subsequent printings, not the first, regardless of a 'the printed pricet Edition' label in the….
The Siege of Krishnapur — 1973 · Weidenfeld & NicolsonFirst UK edition, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1973. 'First published in Great Britain in 1973' on the verso, no later impression statement. Original cloth, dust jacket with price. Won the 1973 Booker Prize; the central volume of the Empire Trilogy and the most collected. UK Weidenfeld & Nicolson edition is the true first; the US edition (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) followed in 1974. The US Harcourt Brace Jovanovich edition is later and US-priced. No major book-club edition.

More Literary Fiction (UK & World) shelves: John Berger, John Fowles, Jorge Luis Borges, José Donoso (trans. Hardie St. Martin & Leonard Mades), José Saramago, Julio Cortázar.

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