Rare Book Monthly
The Collaborative Project:How Much For The Oregon Trail ¡V
Using the Primary Search, we look up the 1849 (first) edition of Parkman's Oregon Trail.
Now we go back to “ABE” and refine our search to only those copies printed in 1849 (use Abebooks.com’s “Advanced Search” to do this). Sadly, the one-cent copy no longer appears. Nor do 1,420 others. We are left with five copies that could be first editions, and the prices range from $1,650 to $7,500.
Are these prices reasonable? Back we go to the AED to learn as much as we can about this book. First we check the bibliographies. Sabin doesn’t tell us a lot, except that it confirms the first edition is dated 1849, the third edition is dated 1852, the fourth 1872. It doesn’t tell us about the second edition, so perhaps some 1849’s are a second. Howes’ Usiana bibliography tells us more. Here we find the first printing of the first edition was run in March of 1849, but this was a “freak” variant of six copies which were sent to Parkman himself. Also, some sheets were sent to England where they were issued with the imprint “New York and London” (other copies showed New York alone). The second printing of the first edition was run in early April and had 500 copies, while the third printing was run in late April and had 1,000 copies. Howes tells us how to distinguish copies, including minor printing changes and placement of advertising pages. Advertising pages were in the front of the “freak” first printing, in the back (with page 7 mislabeled 8) in the second printing.
Howes is the unusual bibliography that also values books. Parkman’s Oregon Trail was a “c” on Howes scale, “c” meaning “quite rare, obtainable only with much difficulty.” Howes valued “c’s” at between $300-$600 back in 1954. This is obviously going to be an expensive book today.
Now that we know when the first edition was printed, and something about the different printings, we want to refine our listings further. We go back to the AED’s “Primary Search,” and this time, in addition to “Parkman” as author and “Oregon Trail” as title, we add “1849” as printing date. This time we get 22 records. First we look at Bradford’s bibliography and find the elusive second edition was printed in 1852 along with the third. Now we know that any 1849 edition is a first (though of multiple printings). The first priced record we find dates back to 1881 and the Brinley auction. It doesn’t tell us anything about the printing or condition, but based on the printing date we know it was a first edition. It went for $1.50. Of course it was only 32-years-old at the time.
After a couple of not terribly informative listings from the 1920’s by Maggs Brothers, we find from Ernie Wessen’s Midland Notes that even in 1937 that while mediocre copies were common, fine copies were very rare. In 1937 he pegged a fine copy at $150 -- perhaps a bit aggressive as the book shows up several times in the ‘40’s and ‘50’s in catalogs from Eberstadt and Decker for less, primarily from the second printing of the first edition. We know it’s the second printing based on the advertisements being in the back, and page 7 of the advertising pages misnumbered as 8.
