George Orwell
‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’

The first American edition

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR — First American edition was published by Harcourt, Brace & Co. in 1949. States “first American edition”. Cover grey calico grain, jacket has red background, front flap has $3.00 price. Published in June 1949 in 10,000 copies, and there were several additional printings in the next two years. Fenwick says the jacket is blue, but the red jacket is preferred, possibly because Book club edition also has blue cover.

By Daniel J. Leab:

Harcourt preferred the title “The Last Man in Europe”, or at least the use of the numbers “1984”, but ultimately agreed to Nineteen Eighty-Four. The American publishers like their English counterpart were anxious to get Orwell's book into print as soon as possible. Therefore, the American edition was set separately from a copy of Orwell's manuscript. Orwell in the proof stage caught some of the changes made by Harcourt's editors, but there are differences between the original American and British editions. Another problem arose from Harcourt's wooing of the Book-of-the-Month Club. Initially the club agreed to accept the Orwell book only on deletion of some of the more political and theoretical parts of the novel, such as the Appendix on “The Principles of Newspeak” — the substitute for “Old Speak (or Standard English, as we should call it)” whose implementation Orwell explained was “designed to diminish the range of thought”. Orwell refused to delete anything and after some brief hesitation the Club agreed to accept the Orwell book as a monthly selection. The American edition was published in June 1949. A year after publication Harcourt had sold 170,000 copies; and 190,000 were distributed in the book-club edition.