3 Samuel Butler first editions are documented on this shelf, from Erewhon (1872) to The Way of All Flesh (1903) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Samuel Butler 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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- Erewhon — 1872 · Trübner & Co.Published anonymously; the true first printing, issued in the last days of March 1872, carries no preface. Demand sold out this first printing within about three weeks, and because Butler had not had stereotype plates made, the book was reset and issued again the same year with, in Butler's own words, "a few unimportant alterations and additions" and a new preface -- so a copy that includes a preface, even though…. Butler's name did not appear on the title page until the "new and revised edition" published by Grant Richards in 1901; any copy naming Butler as author on the title page is a later revised edition, not the anonymous 1872 Trübner original.
- Erewhon; or, Over the Range — 1872 · Trübner & Co.Published anonymously by Trübner & Co., London, at the end of March 1872, with no author's name appearing anywhere in the book - Butler's identity was not confirmed on a title page until the 1901 revised edition. The first edition is bound in red-brick cloth, blocked and stamped in black, with the title in gilt on the spine and brown endpapers. Contemporary demand was strong enough that the first printing…. Butler's own 'new and revised edition' of 1901 names Butler as author on the title page for the first time and adds a five-page preface plus two new chapters on animal and vegetable rights satirizing T. H. Huxley; any copy naming Butler as author, or containing these additional chapters, is not the anonymous 1872 first edition.
- The Way of All Flesh — 1903 · Grant RichardsLondon: Grant Richards, 1903 — first edition, published posthumously a year after Butler's death and arranged, as the author had asked, by his literary executor R.A. Streatfeild. Octavo, 424pp plus 12pp of publisher's advertisements at the rear. Bound in original red cloth, titled in gilt on the front board and the spine, top edge gilt. The first-issue requirements the ABAA trade states are that the half-title is…. Grant Richards, London, 1903 is the true first, confirming the census claim; there is no competing simultaneous edition. E.P. Dutton, New York, issued the first American edition in 1910 — the census year is right — but note that several dealers misdescribe Dutton's 1916 printing as the first American, so check the date on the title page. The more important 'first thus' point is textual rather than national: the…. Later Grant Richards printings and the many reprints separate readily by imprint and date: E.P. Dutton (New York, 1916 and after), the Heritage Press edition of 1936 with a Theodore Dreiser introduction, Doubleday Doran 1944, and mid-century paperback giants are all reprints or 'first thus'. No book-club-specific tells for the 1903 Grant Richards were documented in the sources consulted.
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