I have a Marie Corelli book and I was able to date mine via a website created by a collector. I believe it is the author’s name .com or something similar. When I was looking, the site creator had pictures with each book to help identify the year it was printed.

Life is full of coincidences. I just finished revising a listing we have up of “Thelma” on t-h-a-t o-t-h-e-r s-i-t-e lol (don’t know how appropriate it is to mention other sites here, etc etc). Feel free to investigate my listing. It is another reprint from the Fenno Company published in 1905. You may find it interesting, and anything you wish to borrow from the write-up – feel free.

I’ll add all this assuming some people with no book background may be reading … Grosset and Dunlap is notorious for publishing books without indicating the date that they themselves issued the books. But they almost always leave the original copyright date in the book. Thus one will see a Grosset & Dunlap book with a date (for example) of 1908, but the actual date of Grosset’s issue may be 1920 or 1930. Many people get tripped up by this. It is understandable.

It can be very confusing, but, generally speaking, keep in mind that a copyright date is not the date of publishing. The two dates – copyright date and publishing date – may coincide, however, but not necessarily.

A book issued with no publishing date is generally designated as N.D. – No date. If there is a date on the title page that date is given clearly – 1908. If the date is taken from the copyright page, it is written in [URL removed] (1908) … and if the only date there is the copyright date then [URL removed] (©1908). If there is no date but you know it, either from outside sources such as a bibliography or article, or internal evidence within the book – the abbreviation ‘N.D.’ is used and the date is written in brackets, [URL removed] [ 1908 ] … if possible explain the source of the date.

Grosset & Dunlap were mainly a reprint house, but not always, and there are many series titles for which Grosset is the publisher of origin. But they were, as you already know, not the publisher of the first edition for “Thelma”.

Sometimes all one can do is state No Date. I hope this is helpful for some — Kind regards, John.

Is there no page in the book with publishing information? This is usually the back side of the title page. I’m wondering if the page is missing or it is there but simply has no date.

If the page is there, but has no date, it could be a book club edition that is missing the dust cover. Sometimes these editions have some kind of marking on the back leaves of the book that are usually blank.

emptymirrorbooks.com is a good site to find info about old books book collecting information and identifying first editions first printing. good luck.

The title was written and published in England in 1887 , but it would have taken some considerable time to have been printed in the US. . I’ve seen 2 ads for Grosset copies purporting to be from 1902.

It’s possible that the date is there but in Roman Numerals ,
eg 1902 = MCMII , 1904 = MCMIV etc.
Also it may have been published under a " series" name , such as Medallion, Jupiter etc which will also help narrow the range.
And finally , quite a number of early books were simply issued without a date at all.
with regards , William.

I’m not very knowledgeable on antiquarian books but William seems to be on the right track. This is what my own amateur detective work came up with..maybe you can contact one of these sources.

One person on LibraryThing in the U.S. owns a copy of this book. This is a public profile so I think it would be okay for me to post it here.
[URL removed]

Also, here are some library sources that have a copy of this book.
[URL removed]

Good luck!

Vialibri is another good source for rare books and you can check off which sites you want to search rather than going to each individual site.

[URL removed]

You will see that there are various cover styles and materials as well as condition of the book. All contribute to establishing a value. Of course, the value is only what someone is willing to pay.

Thank you all for taking the trouble and time to help me with identifying a publishing date for my copy of THELMA. I’ve learned so many new sites to pry around in – never heard of them before.
I always thought that people who like books are worth knowing – now I know it’s true.
Thanks again.