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A Further Note on the First Printing
of the
Great Gatsby
by
Matthew J. Bruccoli
When Bruce Harkness was preparing "Bibliography and the Novelistic Fallacy,"[1] his very useful article on the printed texts of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, he was unable to locate a copy of the third printing of the first edition. Since I have acquired this volume—and since it is scarce—it seems worthwhile to comment here on this printing.
There were three printings of the first edition of the novel: April 1925, August 1925, and August 1942.[2] The third printing was issued after Fitzgerald's death and was probably quite small (information about the number of copies printed is wanting in the Scribner records I have examined); my copy is the only one I know of. The book is readily identified by the 1942 date on the title page.
Although there are authorial changes in the second printing, and although Fitzgerald made additional corrections in his own copy of the novel, collation of the first and third printings on the Hinman Machine reveals that there are no fresh corrections or revisions in the third printing not present in the second. However, this collation did turn up a second-printing correction that Prof. Harkness missed: 211.7-8 Union Street station] Union Station. It is interesting that the galley proof at the Princeton University Library reads "La Salle Street station" at this point.[3] These galleys are so heavily revised, however, that they were almost certainly reset, and thus the change to "Union Street station" was probably made by Fitzgerald in the reset galley proof.
There is no "Union Street station" in Chicago. If Nick's recollections of his trips home from school are based on Fitzgerald's, then the Union Station would have been where Fitzgerald changed from the Pennsylvania Railroad to the Milwaukee or Burlington for the trip to St. Paul. If Fitzgerald had come to Chicago on the New York Central, this would have brought him in at the La Salle Street Station; but he would then have gone to the Union Station. Hence it is likely that in the reset galley Fitzgerald inserted "Union" for "La Salle"—neglecting to cross out "Street"—which resulted in the incorrect first-printing reading "Union Street station".
Notes
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