Sunday, September 23, 2007

Top Ten Rarest Pulitzer Prize Books

This list might surprise some who would expect To Kill a Mockingbird or Gone With the Wind to appear. In fact, most people never heard of the books listed below. But Pulitzer collectors will immediately recognize them, and they know all too well that these books are extremely difficult to find in first printings with dust jackets. We have listed them here with links to photos of original dust jackets and copyright pages.

1. So Big by Edna Ferber

2. Lamb in his Bosom by Caroline Miller

3. The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson

4. The Store by T.S. Stribling

5. His Family by Ernest Poole

6. Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin

7. Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes

8. Honey in the Horn by H.L. Davis

9. Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington

10. Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Red Herring

For years Pulitzer collectors were looking for the first state, first edition of John Marquand's The Late George Apley, but they could only find the second state on the market. According to several guidebooks, the difference between the states was found one page 19, line 1. The first state of the first printing said “Pretty Pearl” while the second state said “Lovely Pearl”.

The idea of a first and second state was accepted as fact. But then Pulitzer collectors began to realize two things:

1. Nobody had ever seen an actual first edition in the first state (“Pretty Pearl” instead of “Lovely Pearl”.)

2. But they did see “Pretty Pearl” in all later printings. And that didn’t make much sense. It didn’t seem likely that the publisher started with “Pretty Pearl”, changed it to “Lovely Pearl”, and then changed it back to “Pretty Pearl”.

Recently, collectors started to suspect that perhaps there never was a first state of the first printing, and many have concluded that the guidebooks were wrong. So it seems that for years Pulitzer collectors were looking for a red herring, and book dealers were charging a discount because they thought they had the second state (when in fact there was no first or second state.) Now I have observed that the price of The Late George Apley has increased significantly as people realize the true value of their first editions.

For first edition points of The Late George Apley and a further explanation of the supposed first and second state click here.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

The Top Ten Most Popular Pulitzer Prize Books

Like the Oscars, the Pulitzer Prize has many award categories, and most of these categories are journalistic – Breaking News Reporting, Investigative Reporting, Feature Writing, Commentary, etc. There are also a few book categories – Fiction, General Non-Fiction, History, Biography, and Poetry. But when people talk about collecting Pulitzer Prize books, they are generally talking about the Fiction Category.

With that in mind, here is the top ten most popular Pulitzer Prize for Fiction books:

1. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

2. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

3. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

4. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

5. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

6. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

7. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

8. The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

9. Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener

10. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry


In addition, there are few books in the other categories that have particularly popular. They are:

Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy (For Biography)

The Spirit of St. Louis by Charles Lindbergh (For Autobiography)

Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter (for General Non-Fiction)