Confederacy of Dunces

The bad news is that the first edition of John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces is rare. Only 2,500 copies of the first printing were produced. By comparison there were approximately 20,000 to 50,000 first printings of The Grapes of Wrath, and between 5,000 and 10,000 printings of Gone With The Wind. So there a very few out there in the wild.

The good news is that most people have no idea what this book looks like, so they wouldn’t know if they tripped over it. That makes it possible to find one at a garage sale, book swap, or used book store, which is how I found mine. It was just sitting there on the top of a book shelf of my local book shop. I bought it for $8, and didn’t realize what I had until I got home and researched it.

To see what a first edition looks like, check out Confederacy of Dunces First Issue Points at www.pprize.com

As you can see, "First Edition" or "First Printing" is not stated. So how do you know it's a first? You know it by the lack of a second, third, forth, etc. statement on the copyright page. And according to pprize.com, the date of 1980 must be present on both the title page and copyright page. The dust jacket has a price of $12.95, and a single blurb by Walker Percy on the back. A first edition of Confederacy of Dunces in very good condition fetches about $2,000.

The story of the book is that John Kennedy Toole wrote the book in 1969, and then committed suicide before it was published. His mother spent years trying to convince someone to publish it. Finally she pressured Walker Percy to read it. Percy was teaching at Louisiana State University. Percy read the first few pages, and was hooked. He could not put it down. He convinced the Louisiana State University Press to publish it. They produced their standard first printing of 2,500 copies. The book took off like a rocket. Soon they made a second printing, then a third. Next thing they knew this little university press had published a Pulitzer Prize novel.

More tomorrow…