1 book with different titles/covers?

Good day all,
I bought this book thinking that it was a great condition first edition but now i'm just a little confused. in researching i find several titles and covers with the same actual book inside.
notice the copyright page. this is the only one i found where Dodd Mead and co as Natural history in anecdote is printed.
So was this the first edition first printing and the others came after in the same year 1895?
1 Natural History
2 Natural History in anecdote
3 Natural History of the World
Thanks in advance for any and all information

Mikey

 

It sounds like Natural History in Anecdote was an earlier title than Natural History of the World, since it was copyrighted under the "Anecdote" title earlier than when this came out. I wonder whether it was ever published with the "Anecdote" title?

Also, a copyright date is often not the same as the publication date.

 

Thanks fig, but i didn't see any earlier dates other than 1895.

 

Yes, the copyright date would be earlier than the publication date. It coukd also be the same year. And unfortunately, some books don't list the publication date. It could be the same year it was copyrighted, but it seems odd to change the title so soon after copyright. Not saying they didn't do that, of course.

 

Thank you very much fig. Only one question. Is my book considered a first edition?

 

Can you tell if the illustrations are chromolithographs. Is there a dot matrix? Are they on a different kind of paper than the text? Do those pages look like they were added separately or are they bound in with the text pages? Does it look like if you took the book apart, text and illustrations would be sharing the same piece of paper?

 

There are no dots.the paper is different than the text and separate single pages with printing on one side only

 

Maybe tomorrow or Friday I can look into the edition question... or maybe somebody else will? With the holiday coming I'm not sure who will be around.

 

Here is the book in Digital form: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/117237#page/15/mode/1up

From the style of the Cover I am pretty certain that it was printed after 1900, if it contains chromotithos until about 1920, if not it could be as late as 1940.

I would not consider it a first Edition, it was obviously published under a different title before and books that have a copyright date but no printing Info are rarely first editions.

 

I've found four different titles under which this book was issued through the years. Four by Dodd, Mead. There could have been more. One of these titles was the one under which it was copyrighted by Dodd, Mead.

I go along with McAdder's thoughts on this, in general. The link provided above is for the Biodiversity Library copy of the title page with the variant title just Natural History. I've not been able to find a history of the variant titles under which it was published. Wikipedia has a biography of Alfred Henry Miles that includes an image of a cover (not title page) of a variant title, Universal Natural History. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Henry_Miles (Edited to include the link.) Alfred Henry Miles was British, and there were British editions of the title also. I haven't researched this in depth but it appears that Dodd, Mead's American editions were published first. I believe it will be a very long project to try to verify the exact date of your edition, and probably not worth it.

The HathiTrust site has several cataloged versions of this in variant titles available in full text. All just say Copyright 1895. However, there is one digitized there with the copyrighted title Natural History in Anecdote that happens to have a personal inscription in it dated December 1896:
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hw2pt1

The inscription is on the very first page that was digitized. This is one reason that I think that the title under which it was copyrighted was published first and they changed the title later. The cover of that title was not digitized in HathiTrust.

 

As others have noted, the change in the title would indicate a later version. Looking on abebooks.com, (searching for author: Miles, title: Natural History Anecdote) there are several early (1895) versions of this book listed. Comparing the descriptions of the covers, yours is most likely a later printing. One version is described as bound in "original red pictorial cloth (paste-down of leopard), 5 1/2 x 8 inches". Another is described as "original full olive green cloth with black & gilt lettering on the front cover and the spine". The more decorative bindings would be more typical of a first printing. The cover of the op's edition is comparatively plain, with no illustration pasted on the cover or gilding on the title, and so probably later. Dodd, Mead may not have indicated subsequent printings on the copyright page during this time period.
The book might technically be considered a first edition, if the text was not altered from the original printing, but it would not be considered a first edition/first printing in any collectible sense.

 

??? What do you suppose that means? Not the skin, I hope?

 

No, no - just an illustration of a leopard, like the chromolithographs inside. "Paste-down" just means it is a paper illustration glued to the cover.

 

Thanks! My understanding of paste-down is that it is the endpaper that is glued to the inside of the cover. But it also makes sense that it could be an illustration glued to the cover.

 

Very interesting opinions. Thanks to all of you for your interest and experience in this thread. I'm still puzzled by the fact that I can't find one copy with the same title and cover as mine. And why the copyright page is of the other title.

 

It's because it's basically the same book, except for the cover and title page. Publishers do change the titles of their books, and it was probably done even more frequently in that era. They also changed covers a lot.

They considered it to be the same book they copyrighted. They considered the book's contents to be what they copyrighted. One thing that seems a bit unusual is that they mentioned the title under which they previously copyrighted it. I haven't seen that very often, but have seen it. It's actually very useful that they do that, because there is no question that it's the same book, just with a different title.

By the way, I found this 1907 listing for the book under the title that is on yours. I'm not sure if it had the same cover yours does because this book is just an index of books published in a certain year.
https://books.google.com/books?id=f...story of the world" anecdotes "miles"&f=false