2 Mary Shelley first editions are documented on this shelf, from Frankenstein (1818) to The Last Man (1826) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Mary Shelley 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 Mary Shelley copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.

Frankenstein — 1818 · Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & JonesThree volumes, published anonymously (London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones, 1 January 1818), in an edition of 500 copies. Each volume has its half-title; Volume I carries the dedication leaf 'TO WILLIAM GODWIN… by the Author' and the unsigned preface written by Percy Bysshe Shelley, dated Marlow, September 1817. All three title pages are dated 1818 and bear the epigraph from Paradise Lost ('Did I…. The 1818 three-volume first (anonymous, 500 copies, with Percy Shelley's preface and the Paradise Lost epigraph) is the true first. The 1823 second edition (2 volumes) is the first to name 'Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley' on the title page; the heavily revised 1831 one-volume Colburn & Bentley 'Standard Novels' edition supplies the now-standard text and Mary Shelley's new introduction but is a much later 'first…. The 1831 single-volume Colburn & Bentley 'Standard Novels' edition is frequently mistaken for an early first — it is a revised later text with a new frontispiece and introduction, not the 1818. Any one-volume copy, any copy naming Mary Shelley on the title page, or any copy lacking the Paradise Lost epigraph is not the 1818 first.
The Last Man — 1826 · Henry ColburnFirst edition, three volumes, published anonymously ('by the author of Frankenstein') by Henry Colburn on 23 January 1826, entirely uncut as issued. Collation is xii, 358, [2 ads]; [ii], 328; [iii], 352 pages, with a checkable point in volume I, where page 327 is misnumbered as 227. Two advertisement leaves appear at the rear of volume I. No author's name appears on the title page of any volume.

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