Numbered copy

The numbering of copies accompanies the birth of limited editions in the nineteenth century: bibliophile societies, and later the publishers of illustrated editions and large-paper copies, would state in a limitation statement how many copies had been printed on each paper, and each copy was given its number, in pen, by numbering stamp, or at the press. In the twentieth century the practice became widespread in ordinary literary publishing: at Gallimard, Grasset or Stock, the first copies of every first edition were numbered on Japan, Holland, laid or wove paper, according to a hierarchy of papers set out in the limitation statement.

The number is only meaningful when read against the limitation statement: it indicates the paper of the copy and its place in the print run, and allows one to verify that the copy is indeed what it claims to be. The bookseller records the complete limitation statement, the number and the paper, and checks their consistency; he notes named copies, printed in the name of a subscriber, and lettered or marked hors-commerce copies, reserved for the author, the publisher and the collaborators. A low number has no particular value, except when it designates a rarer paper; by contrast, copy number 1, or the named copy of a dedicatee, may have a history of its own.

The numbered copy is often confused with the limited deluxe edition: all copies of the limited deluxe edition are numbered, but not all numbered copies belong to the limited deluxe edition, the post-war wove-paper copies having been printed by the hundred. Limitation statements were sometimes printed in advance on paper runs larger than the number announced, giving rise to passe copies (overs). A manuscript number added after the fact, or a limitation statement transferred from another copy, can be detected by the ink, the paper and the stitching.