Tag Archives: Writers

Fabulous First Editions – Drop In

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This is your opportunity to see some amazing modern first editions in the wild, at our Archives Show-Off event for November.

Drop in to Special Collections and Archives (A108, First Floor – Templeman Library – A Block) on Tuesday 26th November 2024 between 12pm and 2pm.

View the incredible first edition of JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy – ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ – published in 1954. (including a gorgeous fold out map)

Front cover of the JRR Tolkien book The Fellowship of the Ring. The book is light beige, with an image of a red eye, and a gold ring and some runes

The Fellowship of the Ring, by JRR Tolkien (First edition, 1954) Reference: MOT.05

Take a peek at DH Lawrence’s privately published edition of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, part of a limited edition run of 1000 copies printed in Italy in 1928 and signed by the author. This book was not openly published until 1960 after it was the subject of an obscenity trial against its publisher, Penguin Books.

Image of a book with brown paper covers on its side showing the spine with title label and DH Lawrence's Phoenix motif

DH Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (Private Printed Edition, 1928) Reference: MOL.A97

Marvel at the delicate uncut pages of TS Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’, in its first publication in the UK in book form in 1923, published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s Hogarth Press.

Front cover of TS Eliot's The Waste Land which shows blue marbled paper covers and a white label in the centre

TS Eliot, The Waste Land (First edition, 1923) Reference: ELIOT PS3509.L43.W3

Also on display will be Graham Greene’s ‘Our Man in Havana’ (1958), Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ (1932), Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Brideshead Revisited’ (1908), Ernest Hemingway’s ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ (1940) and many more.

Image of a book with a cream coloured cover and red label on the spine - reading For Whom the Bell Tolls, with the embossed signature of Ernest Hemingway printed on the front centre

Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls (First edition, 1940) Reference: MOH.E5