The Seven Storey Mountain Bookshelf
CHARACTERISTICS OF A TRUE FIRST EDITION
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| FIRST EDITIONS |
NOTES |
SUBSEQUENT EDITION |
black cloth edition |
Most of the 6,000 printings of the first edition of The Seven Storey Mountain were bound in black cloth. A small number were bound in off-white cloth. A "pirated edition" in white cloth was produced likely in the early 2000s. In More Than Silence, Patricia A. Burton described the characteristics of the counterfeit as follows, it will have all of the characteristics of a true first edition, but will have "unnaturally bright paper." The true first edition measures 35mm wide by 208mm tall, and the pirated edition measures 33mm wide by 210mm tall. |
pirated white cloth |
first edition statement |
As Patricia Burton states (see last section on More Than Silence), all of the true first editions of The Seven Storey Mountain must contain the following characteristics (though the counterfeit white cloth edition matches this except for the slight size discrepancy noted above and some updates to the dust jacket like no price):
-cloth hardcover editions with a dust jacket,
-all are "stated" first editions (have "first edition" printed inside). |
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$3.00 original price |
On the dust jacket:
-$3.00 price tag;
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First |
-after the third printing, the quote "He received the Catholic Press Association award for poetry in 1948" was removed from the fourth paragraph of the dust jacket's back flap;
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Later |
First: "author is second from the left" |
-back of the dust jacket, second photo caption, "Trappists at work in the filed (The author is second from the left)"
--subsequent printings change the parenthetical statement to "author on the left";
-on the third printing and afterward, the photographer "Daniel Frances Connell" appears under the bottom photo on the back but is missing from the first and second printings.
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Later: "author on the left" |
Later: "Ordnis" (typo) |
Error only in the first printing:
-"Ex Parte Ordnis" corrected to "Ex Parte Ordinis" (on behalf of the order) appears on the verso of leaf 3 with the Nihil obstat (nothing stands in the way [of publication]) from the Trappist censors and the Imprimi potest (it may be printed) from the Abbot of Gethsemani Abbey.
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Later: "Ordinis" (corrected) |
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The points of comparison are drawn from page 32 of Patricia Burton's book, More Than Silence with book scans supplied by the Thomas Merton Center.
The Merton Center is grateful to Patricia A. Burton for her many years of bibliographic work. Her book, More Than Silence: A Bibliography of Thomas Merton was a valuable guide in helping to identify and distinguish editions of The Seven Storey Mountain for this exhibit. It serves as an essential guide for serious collectors of Merton's books. It was published in 2008 by The Scarecrow Press (Lanham, MD; Toronto; and Plymouth, UK) and the American Theological Library Association (ATLA Bibligraphy Series, No. 55). Copies are available for purchase:
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780810860957/. |
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See also SITE CREDITS |
