Modern Library Subtype Finder

Collectors have long known that book bindings as well as DJ backs can be useful in identifying a date range for a book’s printing. But over the last few years observant collectors have noticed that there are subtypes—minor variations in style and text content—that can more tightly focus in on a date. So far variations in bindings have been uncovered for binding 5 and in dust jacket backs for styles a, b, h, and l through o. (By the way, these discoveries have opened new collecting areas: collecting all DJ back subtype variations for a particular title, collecting titles only with a specific subtype DJ back, and so on.)

Using the pull-down menu, choose the binding or DJ back you’re interested in; then click Update. In the table that appears a dot in a cell below a letter or number identifies the reported subtype. A dot below X indicates a report of a major type without the subtype specified; this usually means the report came in before the subtypes had been discovered. If a row is shaded in blue, it is extremely likely that all instances in existence for that title have been reported. Click a style letter or number for information about that style’s parameters.

If you know of a subtype for a title that doesn’t appear in the list after you click Update, or of a subtype not reported here for a listed title, please let us know.

		X	l₁	l₂	l₃	l₄	l₅
Absalom, Absalom!	Faulkner			•			•
Act One	Hart M.			•	•
Adventures of Augie March	Bellow		•
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes	Doyle	•
African Queen	Forester	•
Age of Innocence	Wharton			•
Age of Reason	Sartre				•
Ah, Wilderness and Two Other Plays	O'Neill	•
Alice in Wonderland etc	Carroll			•	•
All the King's Men	Warren			•	•
Anna Karenina	Tolstoy			•
Anthology of Irish Literature	Misc	•
Anthology of Medieval Lyrics	Misc			•			•
Apocrypha	Misc			•
		X	l₁	l₂	l₃	l₄	l₅
Apologia Pro Vita Sua	Newman			•
Appointment In Samarra	O'Hara			•
Arabian Nights' Entertainments	Burton					•
Autobiography	Franklin	•
Barchester Towers & The Warden	Trollope			•
Basic Works	Cicero			•	•
Best American Humorous Short Stories	Misc	•
Best of Perelman	Perelman			•
Best Plays	Chekhov			•	•
Best Short Stories	Henry			•		•	•
Best Short Stories	Maugham		•	•
Best Stories	Maupassant			•	•
Bostonians	James H.			•
Butterfield 8	O'Hara			•
		X	l₁	l₂	l₃	l₄	l₅
Cakes and Ale	Maugham				•
Camille	Dumas			•
Candide and Other Writings	Voltaire			•
Canterbury Tales	Chaucer				•
Capital and Other writings	Marx		•	•			•
Captive	Proust			•
Cass Timberlane	Lewis	•
Cities of the Plain	Proust			•
Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy	Burckhardt	•
Cloister and the Hearth	Reade			•
Collected Poetry	Parker	•
Collected Stories	Parker	•
Comedies Vol I	Shakespeare	•
Comedies Vol II	Shakespeare			•
		X	l₁	l₂	l₃	l₄	l₅
Complete Greek Tragedies Vol I	Aeschylus			•	•	•
Complete Greek Tragedies Vol III	Sophocles			•	•
Complete Greek Tragedies Vol IV	Sophocles			•
Complete Greek Tragedies Vol V	Euripides				•		•
Complete Greek Tragedies Vol VII	Euripides			•
Complete Poems and Selected Letters	Michelangelo		•	•
Complete Poetry & Selected Prose	Keats					•
Complete Poetry and Selected Prose	Donne	•
Complete Poetry and Selected Prose	Milton			•
Complete Works	Horace			•
Complete Works	Tacitus	•
Complete Writings of Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War	Thucydides				•
Comprehensive Anthology of American Poetry	Misc			•		•
Confessions	Augustine			•
		X	l₁	l₂	l₃	l₄	l₅
Confessions	Rousseau			•
Confessions of Felix Krull	Mann		•	•
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court	Twain	•
Consolation of Philosophy	Boethius, etc.			•
Counterfeiters & the Journal	Gide			•	•
Cousin Bette	Balzac			•
Creative Evolution	Bergson			•
Crime and Punishment	Dostoyevsky			•
Critique of Pure Reason	Kant			•
Cyrano de Bergerac	Rostand			•		•
Darkness at Noon	Koestler			•		•
David Copperfield	Dickens			•	•
Diary of a Young Girl	Frank			•	•	•
Disraeli	Maurois			•
		X	l₁	l₂	l₃	l₄	l₅
Divine Comedy	Dante		•	•
Doctor Faustus	Mann			•	•
Dodsworth	Lewis			•
Don Juan	Byron			•
Don Quixote	Cervantes			•
Dubliners	Joyce			•
Education of Henry Adams	Adams			•
Eight Plays	Moliere			•
Eminent Victorians	Strachey			•
Emperor Jones/Anna Christie/Hairy Ape	O'Neill			•	•
Enormous Room	Cummings			•
Erewhon and Erewhon Revisited	Butler			•
Fall/Exile and the Kingdom	Camus			•	•	•
Fathers and Sons	Turgenev			•
		X	l₁	l₂	l₃	l₄	l₅
Federalist	Misc			•
Five Great Modern Irish Plays	Misc			•		•
Flowering Judas	Porter			•
Fortitude	Walpole			•
Four Plays	Shaw G.B.			•		•	•
Fourteen Great Detective Stories	Misc			•
Gallic War and Other Writings	Caesar			•
Go Down Moses	Faulkner			•
Golden Treasury	Palgrave			•
Good Earth	Buck			•
Goodbye, Columbus	Roth	•
Great German Short Novels and Stories	Misc	•
Great Spanish Stories	Misc	•
Great Tales of the American West	Misc			•
		X	l₁	l₂	l₃	l₄	l₅
Greek Commonwealth	Zimmern	•
Greek Poets	Misc			•
Greek Way	Hamilton	•
Green Mansions	Hudson			•
Guermantes Way	Proust			•
Gulliver's Travels & Other Writings	Swift			•		•
Hellenistic Philosophy	Misc			•
Hindu Tradition	Misc			•	•
Hiroshima	Hersey					•
Histories and Poems Vol II	Shakespeare			•
Histories Vol I	Shakespeare			•	•
Human Nature and Conduct	Dewey	•
Humphry Clinker	Smollett			•
Hunchback of Notre Dame	Hugo			•	•
		X	l₁	l₂	l₃	l₄	l₅
I, Claudius	Graves			•	•
Iliad	Homer						•
In Dubious Battle	Steinbeck			•
Interpretation of Dreams	Freud			•
Introduction to Aristotle	Aristotle			•
Introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas	Aquinas			•
Intruder in the Dust	Faulkner			•
Invisible Man	Ellison			•	•		•
Irish Fairy & Folk Tales	Misc			•
Jane Eyre	Bronte C.	•
John Dewey On Education	Dewey			•
Johnson Reader	Johnson			•
Joseph Andrews	Fielding			•
Journals	Emerson			•
		X	l₁	l₂	l₃	l₄	l₅
Jude the Obscure	Hardy			•
Kim	Kipling			•
Lady Chatterley's Lover	Lawrence			•		•	•
Last of the Wine	Renault			•
Late George Apley	Marquand			•
Leaves of Grass and Selected Prose	Whitman		•
Lie Down in Darkness	Styron			•	•
Life and Selected Writings	Jefferson			•
Life of Jesus	Renan	•
Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti	Symonds			•
Life of Samuel Johnson	Boswell				•
Life With Father	Day			•
Light in August	Faulkner			•		•
Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects	Vasari	•
		X	l₁	l₂	l₃	l₄	l₅
Lives of the Twelve Caesars	Suetonius			•
Long Voyage Home	O'Neill			•
Lord Jim	Conrad			•
Lust for Life	Stone			•
Madame Bovary	Flaubert	•
Making of Society	Misc				•
Man's Fate	Malraux				•
Mayor of Casterbridge	Hardy			•
Medieval Philosophy	Misc			•	•
Medieval Romances	Misc				•
Memoirs	Casanova			•
Moby Dick	Melville	•
Moon and Sixpence	Maugham				•	•
Naked and the Dead	Mailer				•	•
		X	l₁	l₂	l₃	l₄	l₅
Nana	Zola			•
Napoleon	Ludwig			•	•
New Voices in the American Theatre	Misc			•	•
Odyssey	Homer			•
Of Mice and Men	Steinbeck				•		•
Old Wives' Tale	Bennett			•
On Population	Malthus	•
Oracles of Nostradamus	Ward	•
Oregon Trail	Parkman			•
Our Lady of Flowers	Genet		•
Our Mutual Friend	Dickens			•
Out of Africa	Dinesen			•	•
Outline of Abnormal Psychology	Misc	•
Outline of Psychoanalysis	Misc			•
		X	l₁	l₂	l₃	l₄	l₅
Pale Horse, Pale Rider	Porter			•
Past Recaptured	Proust			•
Pathfinder	Cooper			•
Penguin Island	France			•
Pensees and the Provincial Letters	Pascal	•
Pere Goriot and Eugenie Grandet	Balzac			•
Philosophical Writings	Descartes	•
Philosophy	Hegel			•
Philosophy	Hume			•	•
Philosophy	James W.			•
Philosophy	Kant			•
Philosophy of John Stuart Mill	Mill					•
Philosophy of Schopenhauer	Schopenhauer	•
Pickwick Papers	Dickens			•	•
		X	l₁	l₂	l₃	l₄	l₅
Picture of Dorian Gray	Wilde			•
Plague	Camus			•	•
Plays	Wilde	•
Poems and Fairy Tales	Wilde				•
Politics	Aristotle			•	•
Possessed	Dostoyevsky						•
Praise of Folly	Erasmus				•
Precious Bane	Webb			•
Pride and Prejudice/Sense and Sensibility	Austen				•
Prince and The Discourses	Machiavelli			•	•	•
Progress and Poverty	George H.			•
Rainbow	Lawrence			•
Rebecca	Du Maurier D			•	•
Red and the Black	Stendhal		•
		X	l₁	l₂	l₃	l₄	l₅
Renaissance	Pater	•
Republic	Plato			•		•
Resistance, Rebellion, and Death	Camus			•
Restoration Plays	Misc			•
Return of the Native	Hardy			•	•
Rhetoric and Poetics	Aristotle			•	•
Rise of Silas Lapham	Howells			•
Saint Joan/Major Barbara/Androcles	Shaw G.B.				•	•	•
Sanctuary	Faulkner			•	•
Selected Papers	Russell				•
Selected Poems	Dickinson				•		•
Selected Poetry	Auden			•	•
Selected Poetry	Tennyson			•	•
Selected Poetry and Prose	Blake			•
		X	l₁	l₂	l₃	l₄	l₅
Selected Poetry and Prose	Coleridge			•
Selected Poetry and Prose	Poe			•
Selected Short Stories	Faulkner	•
Selected Short Stories	Singer			•
Selected Stories	Aleichem			•	•
Selected Stories	Kafka			•
Selected Stories	Wodehouse			•
Selected Works	Pope			•
Selected Writings	Bacon			•
Selected Writings	Burke			•	•
Selected Writings	Capote			•
Selected Writings	Emerson			•
Selected Writings	Michener			•	•
Selected Writings	Stein G.					•
		X	l₁	l₂	l₃	l₄	l₅
Sense of Beauty	Santayana			•
Seven Famous Greek Plays	Misc			•
Seven Gothic Tales	Dinesen			•
She/King Solomon's Mines	Haggard			•	•
Short History of United States	Nevins etc.			•
Short Novels	Tolstoy				•
Short Novels Vol II	Tolstoy			•
Short Stories	Chekhov [Tchekov]			•
Short Stories	Saki			•
Short Stories	Tolstoy			•
Short Stories Vol II	Tolstoy		•	•
Sister Carrie	Dreiser			•
Six Modern American Plays	Misc			•
Six Plays	Hellman			•
		X	l₁	l₂	l₃	l₄	l₅
Six Plays	Ibsen				•
Six Plays	Kaufman etc.			•	•
Six Plays	Odets			•
Six Plays by Corneille & Racine	Corneille etc.			•
Six Plays by Rodgers & Hammerstein	Rodgers etc.			•			•
Sons and Lovers	Lawrence			•	•		•
South Wind	Douglas	•
Steppenwolf	Hesse			•	•
Swann's Way	Proust			•
Sweet Cheat Gone	Proust			•	•
Tale of Two Cities	Dickens				•
Ten Days That Shook the World	Reed			•
Tess of the D'Urbervilles	Hardy				•	•
Three Musketeers	Dumas			•
		X	l₁	l₂	l₃	l₄	l₅
Thurber Carnival	Thurber					•
Thus Spake Zarathustra	Nietzsche			•
Tobacco Road	Caldwell			•
Tono-Bungay	Wells			•
Tortilla Flat	Steinbeck			•
Tragedies Vol I	Shakespeare			•
Tragedies Vol II	Shakespeare				•
Travels of Marco Polo	Polo			•
Treasury of Damon Runyon	Runyon			•
Trial	Kafka			•	•
Turn of the Screw	James H.			•
Twentieth Century American Poetry	Misc			•
Twenty German Poets	Misc	•
Two Novels	Malamud			•	•
		X	l₁	l₂	l₃	l₄	l₅
Uncle Tom's Cabin	Stowe		•
Verses From 1929 On	Nash				•
Vicar of Wakefield	Goldsmith			•	•
Victory	Conrad			•
Walden and Other Writings	Thoreau			•
Way of All Flesh	Butler			•
What Makes Sammy Run?	Schulberg			•	•
Wild Duck & Other Plays	Ibsen			•
Winesburg, Ohio	Anderson				•
Wings of The Dove	James H.			•	•
Wisdom of Laotse	Laotse			•		•
Within a Budding Grove	Proust				•
Women in Love	Lawrence			•
World's Great Operas	Howard		•
		X	l₁	l₂	l₃	l₄	l₅
Young Lions	Shaw I.				•
Zuleika Dobson	Beerbohm			•
Totals (282 titles)		36	12	205	75	25	15

Modern Library Jacket and Binding Subtype Finder