One Hundred Years of Solitude [With Exclamation Mark!] by Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - 1970

New York: Harper and Row, 1970. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 422 pages. Perhaps greatest Latin American novel of the 20th century--the sort of book where most Spanish speaking booklovers can quote the opening line, "Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo." [Translated here by Gregory Rabassa as "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember than distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."]

In addition to being a great book, this book is a collector's favorite because of the two states of the dust jacket. In some copies, the first sentence of the jacket flap ends with "one of the most important novels ever written in Latin America!"

Later printings of the jacket tone that sentiment down, replacing the exuberance of the exclamation mark with a more staid period. First editions are found with both the exclamation mark and the period. GGM's bibliographer Don Klein has done a lot of work on the question of the exclamation mark and has shown that most if not all of the review copies have the period (See Gabriel García Márquez: Una Bibliografía Descriptiva).

What does that mean? In short, it's hard to say. It almost certainly does not mean that the first copies off the press had a period and someone at the printer changed it to an exclamation mark, only to change it back for the second printing. Besides, with modern printing presses, the first printed copies tend to end up at the bottom of the pile and it's much more likely that the review copies used jackets from the end of the press run. It's possible that the first jackets had exclamation marks and that error was fixed during the press run, but such changes are rare on modern, high speed presses like those used in 1970s. It's possible that the printer printed both variants at the same time (the final printing plate was almost certainly composed of multiple copies of the jacket). In any case, collectors have long preferred to have the "!" and since it only appears on some copies of the first printing, it is less common than the corrected period copies. First edition (first printing). A very good copy in a very good dust jacket, with the exclamation mark on the front flap. Small owner's name on the front flyleaf, some shelfwear to bottom edge of book. The jacket has some splits at the folds and a bit of loss at the spine end, but generally presents well. Overall, a solid copy of a legendary book.