3 Paul Laurence Dunbar first editions are documented on this shelf, from Oak and Ivy (1893) to Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896) across 3 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Paul Laurence Dunbar 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 Paul Laurence Dunbar copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.
- Oak and Ivy — 1893 · United Brethren Publishing HouseDunbar's first book, which he personally subsidized, was printed by the United Brethren Publishing House of Dayton, Ohio, in a run of about 500 copies in 1893. It is a slim octavo of 62 pages containing 56 poems divided into an 'Oak' section of poems in standard English and an 'Ivy' section of dialect verse. Original copies are recorded bound in russet, gray, or blue cloth with no established priority among the….
- Majors and Minors — 1895 · Hadley & HadleyThe first edition, cataloged as BAL 4917, was printed by Hadley & Hadley of Toledo, Ohio, in 1895 and collates as an octavo of 148 pages. It is bound in the publisher's gray cloth, the front board stamped and lettered in gilt, with a dark-stained top edge and floral-patterned endpapers, and it carries a frontispiece portrait of Dunbar. The poems are again arranged in 'majors' (standard English) and 'minors'….
- Lyrics of Lowly Life — 1896 · Dodd, Mead and CompanyThe first edition, cataloged as BAL 4918, collates xx, 208 pages and was published by Dodd, Mead and Company of New York in 1896 with an introduction by William Dean Howells. It is bound in dark emerald-green cloth, gilt-stamped on the spine and upper cover in a design signed with the cipher 'AM' for its designer, Alice C. Morse, with untrimmed edges and a gilt top edge. The volume carries a tissue-guarded…. Later Dodd, Mead printings and the many 20th-century reprints of Lyrics of Lowly Life lose the untrimmed-edge, gilt-top-only state and the Alice Morse binding design; a copy trimmed flush on all three edges is not the first printing.
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