The Prussian Officer was Mr. Lawrence’s first volume of short stories. The first edition of this book exists in two several issues. The difference between them is marked, not by the binding, but by the catalogues at the end of the volumes. One of these catalogues is described above; the other, twenty instead of sixteen pages, is: A Selection from / Duckworth & Co’s. / List of Publications
The publishers were unable to say which catalogue was in the first issue, and showed what amounted to alarm that anyone should be interested in the matter. They evidently regarded their correspondent as mildly insane. Publishers are of two varieties: the sort who understand the collector not at all, and the sort who understand him too, too well.
I have examined five copies of the book. All but one had the catalogue mentioned in this note. What deduction may safely be made from this? Perhaps, that copies of the issue which I have collated are the scarcer. But are they also necessarily the earlier? One may well have doubts about that.
A somewhat detailed study of the two types of catalogues in Duckworth books between 1913 and 1916 is unfruitful, except to show that the catalogue mentioned in this discussion occurs in Sons and Lovers (1913), and that in the collation above appears in Amores (1916). But since the latter list seems to contain no book published after 1914, it might properly occupy space in a volume brought out in December of that year. The question of the real first issue of The Prussian Officer must, therefore, remain unsettled. One thing is certain: both books here discussed are of the first edition. A later issue, in somewhat lighter blue cloth, lettered in black, must not be confused with either.
The first American edition of The Prussian Officer was published, from the Duckworth sheets, by B. W. Huebsch, New York, 1916.
(7)
THE RAINBOW
Published September 30, 1915
The Rainbow / By / D. H. Lawrence / Author of “Sons and Lovers” / Methuen & Co. Ltd. / 36 Essex Street W. C. / London
Collation:—pp. viii + 468, consisting of half-title (verso blank), pp. (i, ii); title-page, as above (with First Published in 1915 in center of verso), pp. (iii, iv); dedication, To Else (verso blank), pp. v, (vi); table of Contents (verso blank), pp. vii, (viii); text, pp. (1)-463. Printers’ imprint in center of p. (464) as follows: Printed in Great Britain / by Hazell, Watson and Viney, Ld., / London and Aylesbury. P. (465) is occupied by list, dated Autumn, 1915, of Methuen’s Popular Novels Pp. (466-468) are occupied by publishers’ brief résumés of the novels listed on p. (465).