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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;2manycats, post: 4862880, member: 13761&quot;]The set was first published (the &quot;first edition&quot;) by Smith, Elder in 1882. The Putnam set you have is probably the first AMERICAN edition, 1883 - it would help to see the copyright page, if there is one - copyright law was in a ferment around this time, so there might be nothing there. Or it might say &#039;copyright 1882&#039; which would refer to the UK edition, or it might say &#039;entered by an act of Congress 1883&#039; or similar, which refers to the American requirement to submit two copies to the Library of Congress of anything for which copyright protection was sought. </p><p><br /></p><p>Generally speaking, when a professional talks about a &#039;first edition&#039;, they mean the first printing of the first edition, which is usually the most desirable to collectors. A change in edition properly implies a new setting of type, or a revision of the text in some way. There may be many printings of an edition. It was not uncommon (and still is common) for books in English to be published first on one side of the Atlantic, then on the other a few months or a year later, often by different publishers, sometimes in partnership, sometimes just by different deals. Often you&#039;d hear collectors say &#039;follow the flag&#039;, because typically a British author&#039;s first editions were published first in Britain, and an American author&#039;s in the USA. In this case, Heritage may be just a tad lazy in this case. The book is #336 in Nerhood&#039;s &#039;To Russia and Return&#039;, a bibliography of travel-to-Russia accounts in English I have here; he notes only the 1882 English edition. Note, you say &#039;Editors&#039; - I think you mean &#039;publisher&#039;, in this case, G. P. Putnam&#039;s Sons. The editor is the person who corrects the text; the publisher pays for it all and oversees production of the book. </p><p><br /></p><p>Your set is bound in what we would call &#039;original cloth&#039;. The leather-bound set offered by the Japanese dealer is, as noted, rebound in leather. Sometimes there was a publisher&#039;s binding in leather, sometimes more than one, of differing fanciness. Usually collectors want the original publisher&#039;s binding, not a rebound copy, and often the cloth holds up better. Yours are in quite nice condition; a lot of these Victorian travel books were read to death. There might be a list of illustrations &amp; maps, which you should check to see if they are all there - very important, as often maps were torn out by map collectors, and illustrations by print dealers. </p><p><br /></p><p>The little orange tag you have a picture of we call a bookseller&#039;s label (or mark, or ticket). It was applied by the original (usually) seller, as a small advertisement. There are people who collect them, and they are an interesting bit of the book&#039;s history - they were usually applied by upscale sellers to &#039;good&#039; books.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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