The Two V.s of Thomas Pynchon, or From Lippincott to Jonathan Cape and Beyond

• Main Author: Albert Rolls
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Open Library of Humanities 2012-07-01
• Series: Orbit : Writing Around Pynchon
• Subjects: Thomas Pynchon; Biography; Publishing History; V.
• Online Access: https://www.pynchon.net/owap/article/view/33

Two versions of V. were issued in 1963, one in the U.S. and one in England, because errors that had crept into the first American edition were found and corrected in time for the British edition’s release. Pynchon would be able to get the corrections he had made for the British edition into the American paperback the following year. The fact that the first U.S. edition needed to be corrected was forgotten, and with the exception of those printed by Bantam, the U.S. paperback publisher, all other U.S. editions are reproductions of the uncorrected first American edition. This paper traces the editorial history of V. after its publication, detailing the differences between the corrected and uncorrected editions of the novel.