Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby [1st UK edition]. Chatto & Windus. London, 1926.
Price: US$750.00 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: Hardcover. Bound in blue cloth, faded to gray on the spine. Black lettering on the spine. No DJ. The spine strip is cracked at the rear hinge - not enough to detach anything, but enough to make me worry - about 3 inches remain solid. Front side is secure. Some scuffing at crown and foot of spine. At front gutter, a 4 inch crack in the spine where backing linen is visible - but linen is secure. Similar hairline crack to endpapers at read gutter as well. Binding remains secure, but the low quality cloth used in the binding is showing its faults. Title page has no date. Copyright page says only Published 1926. 218 pages. Slightly shelf-cocked. Despite low quality materials, this is a first UK edition of Gatsby. Bruccoli notes (in his bibliography) that the first UK edition exists in two forms: one with dark blue cloth with gold lettering, and another with light blue boards and black lettering (this one). He refers to this edition as a remainder binding or a cheap reprint, but acknowledges that its the same printing and is still a first edition, though it's clear that the dark-blue edition is the preferred one. Please email with questions or to request photos. If you see a photo beside this listing, please be aware that its an ABE Stock Photo (whatever that is) and not a photo of this book.
Seller: Riverby Books, Fredericksburg, VA, U.S.A.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Chatto and Windus, London, 1926.
Price: US$1200.00 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: First UK edition in later state (cheaper) binding, "Published 1926" on the copyright page. Hardcover, bound in light blue linen boards, printed on laid unwatermarked paper, vertical chain lines one inch apart. The binding faded along the spine and edges with scuffing and small stains, short tear at the lower from hinge, small chip at the head of the spine. Light foxing to the preliminary leaves; bottom fore-corner well rubbed. [Bruccoli A 11.1.c-d].
Seller: Moroccobound Fine Books, IOBA, Lewis Center, OH, U.S.A.
FITZGERALD, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Chatto and Windus, London, 1926.
Price: US$7500.00 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: Octavo, 218pp. A stunning copy, bound in full crushed deep blue Levant goatskin, with gilt edges, borders, dentelles, and elaborate spine compartments. French marbled endpapers. Original navy cloth from boards and spine bound in at rear. An exquisitely beautiful copy of the truly rare first UK edition of Fitzgerald's undisputed masterpiece. Matthew Bruccoli, Fitzgerald's premier bibliographer, notes that just 3,000 copies of the UK edition were printed, compared to the ~20,000 examples of the first American printing. Those 3,000 copies were bound in two different cloths--navy and maroon--navy having established priority. "The Great Gatsby" was received with ambivalence upon publication, and with Fitzgerald off in Europe and dead within fifteen years of its first appearance, the author never enjoyed public or critical recognition for it in his lifetime. Fitzgerald often expressed a desire to earn a literary reputation in England, another chance that eluded him during his lifetime, and is evidenced by the small print run. To emphasize the scarcity of this UK edition, we count just about 20 holdings in worldwide libraries; it's also unclear how many of those are in the first binding. By comparison, OCLC records well over 1,000 holdings of the first American edition. A true rarity of modern literature, in a very handsome presentation.
Seller: Cleveland Book Company, ABAA, Rocky River, OH, U.S.A.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. THE GREAT GATSBY. Chatto & Windus, London, 1926.
Price: US$125000.00 + shipping
Description: First Impression (from American plates), one of 3,000 copies. Octavo (19.25cm); primary binding in dark blue V cloth, with titles stamped in gilt on spine; dustjacket; [vi],218pp. Hint of a forward lean, gentle sunning to spine, with some scattered foxing to text edges, preliminary, and terminal leaves; hinges sound; Very Good+. In the Francis Cugat dustjacket, the second issue, with the original 7s. price clipped by the publisher, and the shadow of the new price sticker directly above; gently spine-sunned, lightly edgeworn, with some rubbing to spine ends, joints, and flap folds; minute loss to upper corner-tips, a few tiny tears, with shallow loss to crown, affecting the "T" in "The;" small area of loss skillfully and professionally restored at upper front panel (2 5/8" by 3/4", affecting parts of "The" and the "Gr" in the title); Very Good+. Housed in a custom half-morocco clamshell case. The first English edition of Fitzgerald's third novel and most enduring work, the story of a flamboyant racketeer's attempt to recapture the upper-class girl he fell in love with during the waning years of World War I. While hailed for many decades as an American classic, Gatsby was a commercial disappointment during its time; its two printings totaled 23,870 copies, and at the time of Fitzgerald's death in 1940, stacks of them still remained unsold in the Scribner's warehouse. The UK edition of Gatsby was published from the American plates of the second Scribner's edition, which incorporated corrections to the six textual errors in the first state of the text. Fitzgerald, eager for a better literary reputation in England than he ever enjoyed, was disappointed when his primary publisher, William Collins, turned down the opportunity to publish Gatsby, stating that to published the novel "would be to reduce the number of his readers rather than to increase them." Chatto & Windus would publish the novel in a print run a fraction of the size of the Scribner's edition. In his introduction to New Essays on The Great Gatsby, Matthew Bruccoli notes that "The English impact was negligible. The 1926 Chatto & Windus printing did not sell well, although reviews were better than those Fitzgerald's previous novels had received in England. The Times Literary Supplement called it "undoubtedly a work of art and of great promise"; Edward Shanks in the London Mercury commended the author's control over his material. Conrad Aiken, writing in The New Criterion, praised the form and originality of the novel but stated that it is not "great," "large," or "strikingly subtle" (pp.3-4). Considerably scarcer than its American counterpart, with no jacketed examples found in the auction record, and OCLC noting a scant 20 holdings (of these, only 13 in U.S. institutions). Bruccoli A11.1.c.; Sutherland & Connell. The Connell Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (2010), p.64; Connolly 48.
Seller: Captain Ahab's Rare Books, ABAA, Stephenson, VA, U.S.A.