The Third Edition
The first few printings of the third edition are not marked as such. Instead, they list their printing on the reverse of the title page in the original succession dating all the way back to first UK printing. They are bound identically to the later printings of the second edition. The first impression of the third edition is the one marked as the 24th printing with a copyright date of 1966. Second editions contain the original description of the revised edition, beginning with, "In this reprint several minor inaccuracies...". The third edition's foreword, on the other hand, describes the runic characters seen on the maps and in the text. It commences with, "This is a story of long ago." Also, third editions contain 317 numbered pages, as compared to the 315 of the second edition. After some number of printings (the sixth of the third edition, or 29th overall, at latest), Houghton Mifflin added an explicit declaration of the third edition, making them easy to identify.
Read more about this topic: Early American Editions Of The Hobbit
Famous quotes containing the word edition:
“I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house, but gradually went through all the Latin poets in those moments. He bought, for example, a common edition of Horace, of which he tore off gradually a couple of pages, read them first, and then sent them down as a sacrifice to Cloacina: this was so much time fairly gained.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)