3 Isaac Newton first editions are documented on this shelf, from Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) to Opticks: or, a Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light (1704) across 3 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Isaac Newton 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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- Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica — 1687 · Joseph Streater for the Royal Society, LondonQuarto (about 238 x 178 mm), London, 1687. The title page carries the licence 'Imprimatur S. Pepys, Reg. Soc. Praeses. Julii 5. 1686' — Samuel Pepys was President of the Royal Society when the book was authorised — and Edmond Halley oversaw the publication and distribution, sending out presentation copies at Newton's direction and forwarding Newton forty copies, some bound and some in sheets. The first edition…. London, 1687 is the true first, in Latin; there is no earlier or rival edition, and copies of both title-page issues are first-edition copies. The later Latin editions are the Cambridge 1713 second (edited by Roger Cotes) and the London 1726 third (edited by Henry Pemberton). The first edition in English is Andrew Motte's translation, 'The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy', London: printed for…. No book-club apparatus applies. The practical confusions are the later Latin editions of 1713 and 1726 offered as a 'Principia first edition' on the strength of the title alone, the 1729 Motte translation described as a 'first edition' without the qualifier 'in English', and modern facsimiles and reissues. The Pepys imprimatur on the title and the two 1687 imprint forms — not the date on the title alone — are….
- Opticks — 1704 · Printed for Sam. Smith and Benj. Walford, Printers to the Royal Society, LondonQuarto, London 1704, title printed in red and black within a double-rule border. The first-issue point is that Newton's name does not appear on the title page — the book was published anonymously, and the Advertisement is subscribed only with the initials I.N.; cataloguers also record a later 1704 issue in which the author's name is present on the title, so an Opticks title page naming Newton is not the first…. London 1704 is the true first, and it is a genuine English-language first — Newton published Opticks in English rather than Latin, unlike the Principia. The Latin Optice sive de reflexionibus, refractionibus, inflexionibus & coloribus lucis (London: Sam. Smith and Benj. Walford, 1706), translated by Samuel Clarke under Newton's supervision, is a later translation, not a precedent, although it is collected in its…. No book-club issue applies to a 1704 quarto. The traps are the 1706 Latin Optice, the enlarged 18th-century English editions (Innys and successors), 19th-century reprints, the 1931 Bell/Whittaker reprint of the fourth edition and its Dover successors, and CD-ROM/facsimile reproductions of the 1704 text — all of which reproduce the words but none of which is the 1704 sheets. Plates are frequently extracted and….
- Opticks: or, a Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light — 1704 · Sam. Smith and Benj. Walford, Printers to the Royal Society, LondonQuarto. The defining first-issue point is an absence: the title page is printed in red and black within a decorative border and the imprint carries no author's name — Opticks was published anonymously. Newton signs himself only "I.N." at the foot of the Advertisement, which is dated April 1, 1704; that initialled Advertisement is the confirming point. Called for are 19 folding engraved plates. The Opticks text is…. London 1704 in English is the true first and there is no earlier foreign-language edition — this is one of the rare cases where the English book is the original. The trap runs the other way: the Latin Optice (London: Smith & Walford, 1706), translated by Samuel Clarke, is a first thus, not a first edition, and is mistaken for the 'real' first because period science was expected in Latin. It is also textually…. No book-club edition for a 1704 quarto. The live reprint tell is the modern Dover reprint, which sets the text of the fourth edition (1730) — not 1704 — and carries an Einstein foreword; it is the text most readers know and is regularly mistaken for the original work. Any 'Opticks' with 31 Queries and no Latin treatises descends from 1717 or later, not from the first edition.
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