The Color Purple by Alice Walker, First Edition

The short answer. A true first of The Color Purple is the Harcourt Brace Jovanovich first printing, New York, 1982. It states "First Edition" on the copyright page, carries the publisher's letter code beside it, and wears a jacket priced $11.95 with a single New York address on the rear flap. Six things are checkable on the copy in your hands, and the jacket settles most of them.

What a true first edition is

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1982 — the first printing of the first edition. The binding is quarter purple cloth over cream paper-covered boards, with the spine stamped in silver.

The timing matters for two of the checks below. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983, the year after it was published, so anything on a jacket that mentions the prize was printed after the first printing had already gone out.

The points, one at a time

Run these against the book in hand. Each one says what to look at, what a first printing should show, and what it means if yours does not.

1. The stated line. Look at the copyright page. A first printing states "First Edition" there. A copy that does not carry the words is not this printing.

2. The publisher's letter code. Beside the stated line, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich printed a row of letters — the house's version of a number line, losing its leading character at each new printing. Read it the same way: for the lowest letter present, not for what it spells. One caution specific to this title: the sequence here begins at B rather than A, so a string opening with B is what a first printing looks like — not the second printing it would mean under the general rule. Read it alongside the stated line and the jacket rather than on its own.

3. The jacket price. The front flap of a first-printing jacket is priced $11.95. A clipped corner removes the evidence rather than the printing — see condition grading for what clipping costs. No price at all points somewhere else entirely, below.

4. The address on the rear flap. A first-printing jacket carries a single New York address. A San Diego address was added to the rear flap on later-printing jackets, so two addresses mean a later jacket. This is a point of issue in the strict sense: the change happened after copies were already out.

5. No mention of the Pulitzer. A first-printing jacket says nothing about the Pulitzer Prize anywhere on it, because there was nothing to say yet. A jacket that advertises the prize was printed in 1983 or later, whatever the book inside it is.

6. The binding. Quarter purple cloth over cream paper-covered boards, spine stamped in silver.

When it isn't one

A book club edition. The tells for this title are a blind stamp on the rear board, bulkier paper stock, and a jacket with no printed price. Book clubs reprinted trade copyright pages verbatim, so the stated line at point 1 will not catch one — only the object will. The full method is in How to Spot a Book Club Edition.

A later printing in an early jacket, or the reverse. Points 4 and 5 date the jacket, and points 1, 2 and 6 date the book. When the two disagree you are holding a married copy: both halves may be genuine, but the copy as sold is not what it appears. This is common on a title that stayed in print and in demand — a first-printing book often ends up under a later jacket, and a later book under a rescued early one.

What it's worth

Not a number on this page. Condition and the jacket move the price of this title far more than the printing alone does, and a figure written into a guide is out of date the week after it is published. Run the free lookup to see what copies are actually listed for right now, then grade yours honestly against what you find.

The Color Purple is one of the sixteen titles in our Removed From Circulation series, which documents the bans themselves rather than the bibliography.