Twentieth-century novels in their original printings — what people bought when these books were merely new, before they became inevitable.
Curated by
Maya Reyes & David Chen
Head Buyer & Founder
Forty-two books, no more, picked for the same reason any of us pick books — because we cannot stop thinking about them, and because one day they will not be ours.
A "modern first" is the original printing of a 20th-century book. Not a facsimile, not a re-release, not a beautiful new edition. The actual object: the one a stranger held in 1925 or 1962 or 1987, the one a publisher set in type and a printer ran on a press that no longer exists. That object — paper, cloth, ink, glue — is what we mean. The text travels easily; this is the part that doesn't.
We didn't choose the most valuable books. We chose the ones we couldn't bear to keep ourselves any longer. The Woolf has marginalia by an unknown reader, all in pencil, all extraordinarily smart. The Faulkner has a letter from his publisher loose between pages 144 and 145. The Joyce is one of seven Shakespeare and Company copies we've handled in nearly forty years and the most complete.
If you buy one of these books, we will tell you what we know about its life before it reached us. We will wrap it in wax-coated paper and tie it with twine. And we will, very gently, insist that you read it.
Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company published the first edition of Ulysses in February 1922 in a print run of 1,000, of which we have the 427th. The book is in remarkable condition: blue paper boards intact, white labels barely toned, all 732 pages present. A small chip to the spine head — the kind of imperfection that confirms the book was, once, used.
The Hogarth Press first printing, 2,000 copies, with the original Vanessa Bell dust jacket present and largely intact. This copy bears extensive pencil marginalia in an unidentified hand — passages bracketed, words questioned, one note in the margin of page 167 that reads simply, "oh." A book actually read.
Knopf first printing, 25,000 copies, in the original Knopf jacket designed by R. D. Scudellari. Inscribed by Morrison on the half-title — "For Edith — read it slowly. — Toni" — at a New York signing in November 1987. Perhaps the most consequential American novel of its century, in the form it first arrived.
An essay by Maya Reyes on what we lose, and what we keep, when a book becomes a thing. From the Spring 2026 dispatch.