3 Rainer Maria Rilke first editions are documented on this shelf, from Duineser Elegien (Duino Elegies) (1923) to Letters to a Young Poet (1929). Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Rainer Maria Rilke 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.
Identification only, per the house rule: no prices and no appraisals here. Checking a Rainer Maria Rilke copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.
- Duineser Elegien (Duino Elegies) — 1923 · Insel-Verlag, LeipzigInsel-Verlag issued the Elegien in 1923 in TWO forms, and the census note's "300-copy limited first printing" describes only one of them. The Vorzugsausgabe (deluxe issue) comprises 300 numbered large-paper copies on Zanders watermarked handmade Bütten, printed in red and black in Tiemann-Antiqua by Gebr. Klingspor, Offenbach am Main; tall quarto, approximately 29 x 19.5 cm, 52 pages, uncut. Within that 300:…. German original, Insel-Verlag, Leipzig, 1923, is the true first. PRECEDENCE WITHIN 1923 IS DISPUTED and buyers should be told so: most dealer descriptions state that the 300-copy Vorzugsausgabe precedes the ordinary trade edition (one dating the deluxe to June 1923 and the trade edition to October 1923), while at least one dealer describes the two as issued simultaneously. The identification points above are…. No book-club issue is documented for the 1923 Insel printings. The reprint tells are the Insel house practice of stating the cumulative thousands on later trade impressions, and the physical separation of the two 1923 issues: absence of a hand-numbered limitation leaf, machine paper rather than Zanders Bütten, black-only rather than red-and-black printing, and the smaller ordinary format all indicate the trade….
- Duino Elegies — 1923 · Insel-Verlag, LeipzigGerman true first 'Duineser Elegien,' Insel-Verlag, Leipzig, 1923, printed by Gebr. Klingspor in Offenbach in Tiemann-Antiqua type; issued as a numbered limited edition of 300 copies (Vorzugsausgabe — the first 100 bound in full green morocco gilt at the Wiener Werkstätte, the remainder in three-quarter morocco or paper-covered boards), alongside an ordinary trade edition in red cloth lettered in gilt with text…. Original-language true first = Insel-Verlag, Leipzig, 1923 (numbered deluxe issue of 300 plus the ordinary trade issue, both 1923). First English = Hogarth Press, London, 1931 (Vita & Edward Sackville-West). The celebrated Leishman & Spender Hogarth bilingual edition of 1939 is a 'first thus' — the second English translation, not the first English. The 1939 Leishman/Spender Hogarth edition is frequently mis-sold as 'first in English' — it is first of that translation only. Modern Norton / Picador / Pushkin printings are reprints.
- Letters to a Young Poet — 1929 · Insel-Verlag, LeipzigGerman true first 'Briefe an einen jungen Dichter,' Insel-Verlag, Leipzig, 1929, issued in the Insel-Bücherei series as volume number 406 (posthumous — Rilke died December 1926); it collects the ten letters to the young cadet Franz Xaver Kappus (1903–1908) with a foreword by Kappus, published with the cooperation of Rilke's widow Clara and daughter Ruth. First-issue Insel-Bücherei volumes are identified by the…. Original-language true first = Insel-Verlag, Leipzig, 1929 (Insel-Bücherei No. 406). First English = W.W. Norton, New York, 1934 (M.D. Herter Norton) — US precedes UK; the first British translation (Reginald Snell, Sidgwick & Jackson) did not appear until 1945 (some sources 1950), well after the Norton first. Insel-Bücherei No. 406 was reprinted many times under the same number, so distinguish the 1929 first issue by early-state imprint/printing details, not the series number alone. The 1954 'revised' Norton is a later text state, not the 1934 first.
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