April 12, 2024
January 1920 Reader's Digest FIRST TRUE ISSUE DeWitt Wallace PROTOTYPE
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Exceedingly scarce, in VG++ condition--here is a guaranteed vintage, original prototype issue, or GENUINE FIRST ISSUE, of Reader's Digest from January 1920. DeWitt Wallace produced a small run of these and sent them to publishers in the hopes of launching Reader's Digest. Some time passed, however, before he was finally able to launch the actual magazine with the "second" first issue, which came out in February 1922. This January 1920 issue was a prototype printed on quality paper, evidently intended to attract investor or publisher support for the publication. It is 64 pages in length, and was meant solely as a prototype, so it was printed in considerably smaller numbers than the February 1922 issue, which I understand had a printing of 5000 copies. One website about magazine history speculates that this prototype "first issue" had a print run of only a few hundred. Because this prototype issue was not intended for the marketplace or general circulation, probably very, very few were saved. It appears there are NO copies of this January 1920 issue carried by the libraries on OCLC or WorldCat, which points to the EXTREME SCARCITY of this important first appearance of Reader's Digest, which for many years was America's best-selling consumer magazine.Without a doubt this is an important "high point" in magazine history, the FIRST PRINTED
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