Prentice Hall is the same house as Prentice-Hall; the marks below are its.
What a collector should know first: most Prentice-Hall books are textbooks, whose numbered editions (second edition, third edition) are revisions rather than reprints and attract little collector interest. Collectors mainly want the trade titles of the 1950s to 1970s.
1940s to 1960s
- The imprint place moved from New York (on 1950 and 1952 titles) to Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey (by 1959), which helps date an undated copy.
- The first printing of The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) is bound in blue cloth.
- UNVERIFIED: first printings of this period state "First Edition" on the copyright page (recorded for a 1950 title).
- UNVERIFIED: later printings are listed on the copyright page, so a first printing shows no further printings (as recorded for the 1952 first printing of The Power of Positive Thinking).
- UNVERIFIED: the first printing jacket of The Power of Positive Thinking is priced $2.95.
1970s to 1991
- Number lines came into general use on American books from the 1970s; on such a line the lowest number shows the printing, so a line that includes 1 is a first printing.
- UNVERIFIED: Prentice-Hall titles of the 1970s, including its Spectrum paperback line, carry a number line, and some Spectrum paperbacks were issued at the same time as the hardback.
- Prentice-Hall's trade list ended in 1991, so trade first editions under this name stop there.
From 1991
Prentice Hall continued only as an educational and professional imprint, under Simon & Schuster and from 1998 under Pearson. Revised textbook editions are labelled as new editions and have little standing as collectable firsts.