3 William Gilmore Simms first editions are documented on this shelf, from Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia (1834) to The Wigwam and the Cabin: First Series (1845) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that William Gilmore Simms 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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- Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia — 1834 · Harper & BrothersFirst edition, published July 1834 by Harper & Brothers, New York, in two volumes (12mo), the first of Simms's 'Border Romance' novels set on the Georgia frontier. Bound in dark brown 'CM' cloth with a printed paper label on the spine of each volume; an advertisement leaf precedes the title page in volume one, a point dealers check for completeness. Widely and warmly reviewed on release, the novel helped…. Redfield issued a 'New and Revised Edition' of Guy Rivers in 1855 as part of its uniform reprinting of Simms's romances, and A. C. Armstrong & Son reprinted it again in 1882; both reset the text in uniform publisher's cloth, distinct from the original 1834 Harper two-volume first edition with its paper spine labels.
- The Yemassee: A Romance of Carolina — 1835 · Harper & BrothersFirst edition, published in April 1835 (a preface is dated April 3, 1835) by Harper & Brothers, New York, in two volumes, in an unusually large first printing of twenty-five hundred copies -- by Simms's own account in his preface to the second edition, twice the number usually printed in America for comparable European works -- which bibliographers attribute to Harper's confidence after the strong reception of…. Redfield issued a revised edition of The Yemassee beginning in 1853 as part of its uniform reprinting of Simms's romances; like other Redfield and later reprintings, it resets the text in uniform series cloth, distinguishable from the original 1835 tan-cloth Harper first edition and its pasted-in copyright notice.
- The Wigwam and the Cabin: First Series — 1845 · Wiley and PutnamFirst edition, published October 1845 by Wiley and Putnam, New York (161 Broadway), as Volume 12 of the firm's 'Library of Choice Reading' series -- a fact recorded on the binding and useful for confirming series placement. Collates [10], 233, [1], x pp., bound in publisher's black morocco-backed cloth with the spine lettered in gilt. A companion Second Series volume of new stories was issued the same year under…. Later reprintings combining both series into a single volume, or including these stories in collected 'Simms's Works' sets from the 1850s onward, use different bindings and pagination from the original 1845 Wiley and Putnam Library of Choice Reading issue.
More Literary Fiction (US) & Award Winners shelves: William Harrison Ainsworth, William Kennedy, William Makepeace Thackeray, William Styron, Wright Morris, W.S. Merwin.
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