Gollancz is a London publisher founded by Victor Gollancz in 1927, famous for yellow jackets and the Left Book Club, and now Orion's science fiction and fantasy imprint.
Gollancz is a publisher based in London, founded in 1927. We track 714 editions it published between 1927 and 2024, 285 of them first editions across 711 books. How Gollancz marked its first editions is set out below, with a checker for the year on your title page.
About Gollancz
Gollancz is a London publisher founded in 1927 by Victor Gollancz as Victor Gollancz Ltd, now the science fiction, fantasy and horror imprint of the Orion Publishing Group within Hachette.
For its first four decades the firm was a left-leaning general publisher, recognisable by bright yellow dust jackets with bold typography. Its Left Book Club (1936 to 1948) reached 57,000 members. Gollancz published George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), A. J. Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic (1936), A. J. Cronin's The Citadel (1937), Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (1938), Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim (1953), Colin Wilson's The Outsider (1956), John le Carré's first novel Call for the Dead (1961) and E. P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class (1963). A yellow-jacketed science fiction list ran from the early 1960s to the late 1990s.
Victor Gollancz died in 1967 and control passed to his daughter Livia, who sold the company to Houghton Mifflin in 1989. Houghton Mifflin sold it to Cassell in October 1992, and after Cassell became part of the Orion group, Gollancz was made Orion's science fiction and fantasy imprint in December 1998. It publishes the SF Masterworks series. Its ISBN publisher prefixes include 978-0-575.
Holding a copy? The first edition checker shows Gollancz's practice for the year on your title page.
Identification
How to identify Gollancz first editions
What to look for
An older Gollancz first edition is identified by what is missing: later impressions are recorded on the back of the title page, so a copy with no impression line under its first-publication date is the first.
Allen and Patricia Ahearn's publisher list for ILAB says Gollancz made no first edition statement but noted subsequent printings, in the form "First published (year)" followed by "Second impression (year)". Dealers' listings show the same pattern. Two separate sellers of the 1948 reprint of Dilwyn Rees's The Cambridge Murders quote "Second impression (first cheap edition) January 1948" on the verso, one adding that "First published October 1945" is also stated, while the 1945 printing is offered simply as the first edition.
Jackets:
Gollancz introduced its yellow typographic jacket shortly after the firm was founded, with lettering in black and magenta.
The yellow jacket remained the house style into the 1980s.
Traps
A "First published" date on a reprint. Gollancz kept the original date on later impressions and added the reprint beneath it. The date alone proves nothing; look for the line below it.
Yellow jackets are not evidence of a first. The jacket shows the house style, not the impression; the verso decides.
Examples
Dune: the true first is the 1965 American edition from Chilton Books; the Gollancz edition is the first British edition, which several dealers list as the "first UK edition" or "first British edition". See our guide to Dune first editions.
Dilwyn Rees, The Cambridge Murders (1945): a copy whose verso carries only "First published October 1945" is the first; one with the January 1948 impression line is the cheap reprint.
An older Gollancz first edition is identified by what is missing: later impressions are recorded on the back of the title page, so a copy with no impression line under its first-publication date is the first. Allen and Patricia Ahearn's publisher list for ILAB says Gollancz made no first edition statement but noted subsequent printings, in the form "First published (year)" followed by "Second impr
How many Gollancz books does MyVolumes track?
We track 714 editions published by Gollancz, 285 of them first editions, across 711 books.
Sources
Where these facts come from
First Edition Identification by Publisher, ILAB (Allen and Patricia Ahearn), 2010 (ilab.org)
