The First Printing of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio
William L. Phillips
STUDENTS of eighteenth-century bibliography have for some time
recognized the value of contemporary periodical reviews as
evidence in determining the order of editions or issues of
a book. Such reviews may also have use in determining more
recent "firsts," as the following consideration of the
first printing of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio (New York: B. W. Huebsch,
1919) will indicate.
Winesburg, Ohio is one of the fictional
works of the past fifty years which seems certain to
survive, and as such it has attracted the attention of
those who have been concerned with the study of American
first editions. Merle Johnson in 1929 wrote that the
distinguishing points of the "first issue" (i.e., impression) of this "high
spot" of American literature were a "top stained yellow"
and a perfect title-page border; the "second issue" (i.e., impression), he said, was
marked by "a break in the title-page rule border."[1] In 1941 Whitman Bennett provided a
fuller description; he found
the "first
issue" to be bound in yellow cloth, with the top edges of
the sheets "white (not stained)." As further
distinguishing marks of "first state, first issue copies"
he mentioned "perfect type in the word 'the,' p. 251, 1.
3, which is badly broken in all later printings," and "a
break in the outer vertical rule of the title page frame,
about one-quarter of the way up from the bottom of the
sheet."
[2] Jacob Blanck in his 1936
revision of Merle Johnson's
American
First Editions had indicated that the first
issue had a "top stained yellow" although he suggested the
existence of "some copies, possibly of the first printing,
with either unstained or orange tops."
[3] In the 1942 revision of this work,
possibly influenced by Mr. Bennett's statement the year
before, Mr. Blanck added that "the earliest copies have
perfect type at p. 251, line 3, the word
the."
[4] Apart from the color of
the top, the question seems to be one of "Was the type of
the word
the perfect and the
title-page frame broken in the earliest printing, or was
the situation merely the reverse?"
On the copyright page of the third and all subsequent
printings which I have seen (fourth, fifth, and sixth),
the dates of the first and second printings are indicated
as "April, 1919" and "December, 1919." (Had such a notice
appeared on corresponding pages of the first and second
printings, the confusion we have seen above would, of
course, have been avoided.) On June 1, 1919, the book was
reviewed in the New York Sun. Here
the reviewer railed at Anderson's "very bad English"; he
particularly pointed out the poor grammar in one of
Anderson's sentences: "an intense silence seemed to lay
over everything."[5] Whether in response to
this particular review or to some other notice of the
error, the second printing and all subsequent printings
read "lie" in the passage quoted, to be found on page 86,
line 5. Here then is a certain indication of the priority
of the printings; Anderson's faulty grammar has provided
us the clue.[6]
Unfortunately, I have been able to locate only two copies
which have the "lay" readings; the better preserved one is
to be found in the Sherwood Anderson Collection of the
Newberry Library, Chicago, with an inscription to a friend
in Anderson's hand on the inside of the front cover. It is
enclosed in a white dust jacket, and bound in orange
cloth, with the publisher's device blind stamped on the
front cover and with a white paper label on the spine; the
top edge of the sheets is stained orange-yellow. The title
page frame is
perfect; the type in the word
the, page 251, line 3, is
broken.
[7]
Any copy of the work, then, which contains the revised reading
"lie", and which has no indication of the date of printing
on the copyright page, must, it seems, be suspect of being
one of the second printing, December, 1919. One has little
difficulty locating copies of this kind; and those which I
have examined have been uniformly distinguished by the
points noted by Mr. Bennett for "the first issue." They
are bound in yellow cloth, with the top of the sheets
unstained. In each there is a break in the outer vertical
rule of the title-page frame, about one and three-eighths
inches up from the lower horizontal rule; in each the type
in the word the, page 251, line 3,
is perfect.
Furthermore, collation of the copies of the first printing
with those which must now be considered of the second
printing reveals two other points: (1) in the first
printing the type in the word cutting, page 260, line 9, is perfect; it is
broken in the second printing, although it has been
corrected in the third and all later printings; and (2) in
the first printing the type in the first his, page 196, line 9, is perfect; the
letters is are depressed in the
second printing, although they have been raised in the
third and all later printings.
It may be of interest, finally, to note that the break in the
title page rule, mentioned by Mr. Bennett as
distinguishing the first printing, continues to appear in
the third printing (January, 1921) but has been corrected
in the fourth (December, 1921) and all subsequent
printings. The word the, page 251,
line 3, mentioned by Mr. Bennett as "badly broken in all
later printings [than the first]," actually remains
perfect from the second through the sixth printing (March,
1927), where my investigation ended.
Notes
