4 Matthew Arnold first editions are documented on this shelf, from The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems (1849) to Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism (1869) across 3 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Matthew Arnold 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 Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems — 1849 · B. FellowesMatthew Arnold's first book, published anonymously "By A." in an edition of only 500 copies; Arnold withdrew it from sale soon after publication, finding it had attracted little notice. Collates viii, 128pp and includes "The Forsaken Merman" and "Mycerinus." Original binding is ribbed dark-green cloth elaborately blocked in blind with gilt spine lettering and pale yellow endpapers. Arnold reprinted only some of these poems, often in revised form, in his subsequent Poems (1853 and later) under his own name; a later collected volume bearing Arnold's name and containing "The Strayed Reveller" is not the anonymous 1849 first book.
- Essays in Criticism — 1865 · Macmillan and Co.First edition, London: Macmillan and Co., 1865, collating xix+302pp plus thirty pages of publisher's advertisements, bound in the publisher's original cloth (catalogued variously by dealers as brick-red, terracotta, or red-brown) stamped in gilt. Contains nine essays, including "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time" and studies of Heinrich Heine, Spinoza, Joubert, and Marcus Aurelius. A "Second Series"….
- New Poems — 1867 · Macmillan and Co.First edition octavo in the publisher's original green cloth, spine lettered in gilt, with a twin-fillet border in gilt on the front cover and in blind on the rear cover, brown coated endpapers, and untrimmed edges. Seven of the poems collected here ("Empedocles on Etna," "Human Life," "Youth and Calm," "Youth's Agitations," "Lines Written in Kensington Gardens," "The Second Best," and "Progress") are reprinted…. Later Macmillan collected editions of Arnold's Poems, which folded the New Poems material in with earlier volumes under a single cover, are not the original 1867 stand-alone New Poems.
- Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism — 1869 · Smith, Elder and Co.First edition, London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1869, collating [3], iv-lx, 1-272pp, 8vo, bound in brick-colored publisher's cloth with black-ruled borders and two gilt-ruled borders on the front board, gilt lettering on the front board and spine, and brown-coated endpapers. In this first edition the six chapters are headed only by roman numerals, with no chapter titles; Arnold did not add the now-famous chapter…. The material first appeared as a series of essays in Cornhill Magazine in 1867-68; bibliographers and collectors treat the 1869 Smith, Elder and Co. volume, which added a new preface not in the magazine version, as the first edition in book form. Any copy with named chapter headings, such as a chapter titled "Sweetness and Light," is the 1875 second edition or later, since Arnold's original 1869 chapters were numbered only, without titles.
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