Publication History
- 1951, New York: The Viking Press, October 12, 1951, hardcover
- In his limited-edition pamphlet, Collecting Mystery Fiction #9, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe Part I, Otto Penzler describes the first edition of Murder by the Book: "Yellow cloth, front cover and spine printed with red; rear cover blank. Issued in a yellow, red, black and white dust wrapper."
- In April 2006, Firsts: The Book Collector's Magazine estimated that the first edition of Murder by the Book (featured on the cover of the magazine) had a value of between $400 and $750. The estimate is for a copy in very good to fine condition in a like dustjacket.
- 1952, New York: Viking (Mystery Guild), January 1952, hardcover
- The far less valuable Viking book club edition may be distinguished from the first edition in three ways:
-
- The dust jacket has "Book Club Edition" printed on the inside front flap, and the price is absent (first editions may be price clipped if they were given as gifts).
- Book club editions are sometimes thinner and always taller (usually a quarter of an inch) than first editions.
- Book club editions are bound in cardboard, and first editions are bound in cloth (or have at least a cloth spine).
-
- 1952, London: Collins Crime Club, April 7, 1952, hardcover
- 1954, New York: Bantam #1252, August 1954, paperback
- London: Collins (White Circle), #295c, not dated, paperback
- 1964, New York: The Viking Press, Royal Flush: The Fourth Nero Wolfe Omnibus (with Fer-de-Lance and Three Witnesses), July 23, 1965, hardcover
- 1967, London: Fontana #1534, 1967, paperback
- 1974, London: Penguin Books, ISBN 978-0-14-003806-4 1974, paperback
- 1995, New York: Bantam ISBN 0-553-76311-3 September 1, 1995, paperback
- 2006, Auburn, California: The Audio Partners Publishing Corp., Mystery Masters ISBN 1-57270-536-1 June 28, 2006, CD (unabridged, read by Michael Prichard)
- 2010, New York: Bantam ISBN 978-0-307-75606-0 May 12, 2010, e-book
Read more about this topic: Murder By The Book
Famous quotes containing the words publication and/or history:
“An action is the perfection and publication of thought. A right action seems to fill the eye, and to be related to all nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)