3 Henrik Ibsen first editions are documented on this shelf, from Peer Gynt (Peer Gynt: Et dramatisk Digt) (1867) to Hedda Gabler (1891) across 3 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Henrik Ibsen 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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- Peer Gynt (Peer Gynt: Et dramatisk Digt) — 1867 · Gyldendalske BoghandelPublished 14 November 1867 in a first impression of 1,250 copies. Collates 4 + 259 pp.: 17 sheets folded in octavo, leaf ca. 110 x 170 mm, signature marks 1-17 carrying the line "Henrik Ibsen : Peer Gynt." on pp. 1, 17, 33, 49, 65, 81, 97, 113, 129, 145, 161, 177, 193, 209, 225, 241 and 257; the last sheet has only two leaves. Text is set in antikva (roman), the title in centred majuscules, the divisional title…. The Danish-Norwegian original is the true first: Copenhagen, Gyldendalske Boghandel (F. Hegel), 14 November 1867 — Gyldendal had been Ibsen's publisher since Brand (1866), so a Copenhagen imprint on a Norwegian-language text is correct and not a translation. The census claim is confirmed. No English edition contends: Peer Gynt first appeared in English only in 1892, in William and Charles Archer's translation,…. No book-club apparatus exists for an 1867 Copenhagen imprint. The reprint tells are the sequence of authorized editions in Ibsen's lifetime recorded by HIS — 2nd 1867, 3rd 1874, 4th 1876, 5th 1881, 6th 1885, 7th 1886, 8th 1891, 9th 1893, 10th 1896, Folkeutgave 3 1898, 11th 1899, 12th 1903, 13th 1906. The 3rd edition (September 1874) is instantly distinguishable because it adopts the reformed orthography Ibsen….
- A Doll's House — 1889 · T. Fisher UnwinTitle page reads "A Doll's House. Play in Three Acts. Translated by William Archer," T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1889 — the first edition of this specific, historically important English translation. This is the text tied to the June 7, 1889 Novelty Theatre production in London (Charles Charrington and Janet Achurch), the performance generally credited with establishing Ibsen with English-speaking audiences; T.…. An earlier English translation, "Nora: A Play," by Henrietta Frances Lord, was published by Griffith, Farran & Co., London, in 1882 and used for an amateur production at a hall in Argyle Street, London, in 1885, giving it technical priority as the first English-language edition of the play; the Archer/Unwin 1889 edition is nonetheless the edition collected and cited as Ibsen's English-language breakthrough text.
- Hedda Gabler — 1891 · William HeinemannTitle page reads "Hedda Gabler. A Drama in Four Acts... Translated from the Norwegian by Edmund Gosse," William Heinemann, London, published 20 January 1891 — the first edition in English. Small quarto, with a photogravure portrait frontispiece of Ibsen; the ordinary issue was bound in illustrated white French-paper-wrapped covers, uncut. A large-paper issue limited to 100 numbered copies was published…. To secure British copyright, Heinemann had already privately printed the Norwegian-language text in London in an edition of only 12 copies on 11 December 1890, technically preceding the January 1891 Gosse translation; that copyright-only Norwegian printing is not what is meant by "the first edition in English." William Archer worked with Gosse on the acting version used for the 20 April 1891 Vaudeville Theatre….
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