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How to Identify a First Edition of Gone with the Wind

Margaret Mitchell

A first edition of Gone with the Wind says "Published May, 1936" on the copyright page and nothing else — no later month, no printing statement. Macmillan, 1936, in grey cloth with blue lettering. The month is the whole test: an otherwise identical copy reading "Published June, 1936" is a second printing.

The first edition at a glance

Publisher
The Macmillan Company
Published
1936
Original price
$3.00
Pages
1037
Edition statement
"Published May, 1936" on the copyright page, with no other printing statement of any kind.

Identification checklist

  • Copyright page — the month is everything

    The first printing reads "Published May, 1936" and carries no further printing statement. "Published June, 1936" is a second printing. Nothing else on the book separates the two as cleanly, so this is the point to check first and the one to trust.

  • Publisher and binding

    Macmillan, 1936, in grey cloth boards with blue lettering on the front board and the spine.

  • Jacket price

    $3.00, in the lower corner of the front flap.

  • Jacket back panel — where the title sits

    On the first-issue jacket, Gone with the Wind appears in the right-hand column of Macmillan's list of books on the rear panel, and there are no review quotations. Later issues moved the title to the top of the left-hand column, and later printings added reviews. The jacket is the scarce half of this book: first-printing jackets are harder to find than the first-printing book inside them.

What does not make it a first edition

  • A May copyright page beside a June printing

    Both were on sale at once. Macmillan had roughly ten thousand May-dated copies out alongside the June printing because of the Book-of-the-Month Club's schedule, so the two circulated together from the start. It makes May copies less rare than the date alone suggests — not less genuine, but worth knowing before you pay.

  • A facsimile or later reproduction

    The tells are anachronisms rather than anything subtle: a renewed copyright date such as 1964, or an ISBN, which places production in the 1970s or later. Neither belongs on a 1936 sheet.

Think you have one?

Photograph the cover and the copyright page and FirstFinder will work out the edition and printing, then price it against copies that actually sold. What a specific copy is worth depends on its condition and its jacket, which is why there is no single number on this page.

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