Hot Water Music - BSP hardcover trade edition (1 Viewer)

[PBBUK]

Hi guys

Hoping you can solve a mystery.

I recently purchased what I thought was a hardcover trade edition off Alibris (they take so much longer than ABE to deliver!!!).

It arrived today but has a black cloth backstrip rather than the pink corduroy one described in Krumhansl.

All the other pages seem to be in order with red endsheets and red and gold fale headband.

I understand there were 30 Paget Press imprints made with a black cloth backstrip but this copy is marked Black Sparrow Press Santa Barbara 1983 on the title page.

I thought BSP only issued true first editions with title pages in colour ... so what have I got???

Would appreciate your thoughts to shed some light on the book.

Many thanks

PBBUK

 

[ROC]

Hot Water Music seems to have had a few different treatments.
I'm assuming you bought a first edition, unsigned.
I have (A) a first edition (unsigned) with black backstrip (it should be pink because it's not the Paget version), (B) a 'correct' version of the first edition (really the same thing) with the pink backstrip also from BSP and (C) a Paget Press with the black backstrip.
It seems you bought another version of A.
I wonder how many there are.

 

[PBBUK]

Thanks ROC

It is supposed to be the first edition (unsigned).

Am I right in assuming BSP only issued first editions with coloured title pages?

And ... so I assume you think this is a genuine first edition and I shouldn't return it?


By the way - as you have 3 versions of the hardcover trade edition of Hot Water Music - you can forget that book pissing competition you mentioned earlier.

I CONCEDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PBBUK

 

[bospress.net]

Hi,
If the title page is in colour and there is a colophon present and it does not say anything like "second printing" on the copyright page, then I think that you have one of the variants of the first edition, but still a first edition. I'm not sure if the book binder ran out of the pink or what happened, but we have seen these before.

And for the record, I only have ONE copy of this book and it is the pink cloth edition. So ROC's got me beat too.


Bill

 

[mjp]

The only one I have is Paget (black cloth back), but the title page being color is the thing you can always count on to indicate first edition in paperback. And I think that holds true for the hardcovers as well, yeah? (I have only a few hardcover firsts).

Though I seem to remember reading that there were exceptions to the "color title page rule" where some Black Sparrow hardcovers were concerned...some that weren't made until the softcover printings were already in much later editions...I just can't recall the details. Or maybe I'm just imagining it to fuck with your head. ;) And my head.

But yeah, the color title page is the litmus test for a Black Sparrow first.

 

[bospress.net]

But yeah, the color title page is the litmus test for a Black Sparrow first.

and the colophon page? I seem to think that they removed that colophon page on all later printings.

Bill

 

[jordan]

not always- my copy of last night of the earth poems (hardcover third printing) still has the colophon and a b&w title page.

 

[chronic]

Right, the colophon is not always a reliable indicator of a first printing. The color title page is.