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Hearts in Atlantis Common

1999 · Scribner (New York) — an imprint of Simon & Schuster
First-edition cover of Hearts in Atlantis
First-edition jacket (first edition (verified vs jacket)) · source

What it’s about

A cycle of five interlinked stories that follow a loose group of friends from the early 1960s into the late 1990s, opening with eleven-year-old Bobby Garfield, whose ordinary Connecticut summer changes when a mysterious, gentle old man named Ted Brautigan moves in upstairs and warns of sinister "low men" on his trail. Moving through a college dorm in the Vietnam-draft years and the long shadow the war casts over the decades that follow, it traces how the choices and losses of a generation echo across a lifetime. Part coming-of-age tale, part supernatural mystery, part elegy for the 1960s, it's a book about the people we love, the wars we carry, and what childhood costs us.

Significance Published under King's own name (not a Bachman title); its lead novella "Low Men in Yellow Coats" weaves into King's Dark Tower mythos through Ted Brautigan and the Breakers, and the book was loosely adapted into the 2001 film "Hearts in Atlantis" starring Anthony Hopkins.

Is this the true first?yes — the Scribner trade hardcover (September 14, 1999) is the true first edition. There is no preceding small-press limited or paperback original. This linked-stories volume debuted in this Scribner hardcover.
The US Scribner trade hardcover is the true first edition, first printing. No small-press (Grant/Philtrum/Cemetery Dance) limited precedes it, and it was not a paperback original. The UK first (Hodder & Stoughton, 1999) is a separate, near-simultaneous edition and is NOT the true first for an American author's book; collect the Scribner. No signed/limited gift edition preceded the trade.

First-printing points at a glance

First-printing statementCopyright page should carry the Scribner-era edition statement (reported as "First Scribner edition 1999") AND the full number line. Per Scribner 1998+ convention BOTH the edition statement and the complete number line ending in "...10 8 6 4 2" must be present for a true first printing. Some catalog descriptions abbreviate this as "First Edition"; the operative verifiable point is the number line below.
Number line"1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2" — the full Scribner number line. A first printing shows the complete sequence INCLUDING the leading "1" and the "10". Any line missing the 1 (e.g. beginning "2 4 6...") is a later printing. Cross-confirmed by Evening Star Books, Hermitage Books, and the thedarktower.org Palaver wiki.
Gutter / printer codeN/A — Doubleday gutter codes apply only to the 1974-1983 Doubleday era. Scribner uses no gutter code; identification is by edition statement + number line.
First printing — copiesNot publicly disclosed
First jacket price$28.00 (Upper front flap of the dust jacket (top corner). The UK Hodder first carries a £ price instead; the US first reads "$28.00". A price-clipped flap hides this and lowers value.)
Board (panel) colorBlue paper-covered boards (panels)
Spine / center bindingBlack quarter-binding on the spine, with the author, a peace-sign symbol, title, and publisher stamped in RED on the spine
Binding styleQuarter-bound cloth (two-tone) — quarter black spine over blue paper-covered boards, sewn binding. Octavo (8vo), 523 pp. ISBN 0-684-85351-5.
Topstain / endpapersNo notable colored topstain reported (plain). White pastedowns/endpapers per the Palaver wiki ("white pastedowns"). UNVERIFIED on any topstain color — none noted.

Dust jacket

Pictorial collage front (period 1960s imagery evoking the Vietnam-era / Atlantis theme) with title and "STEPHEN KING" lettering; a red peace-sign motif carries onto the spine. Standard Scribner rear panel and flaps with author bio; $28.00 price at the top of the front flap.

Art / design: Jacket illustration by Phil Heffernan / PHX (pictorial collage); jacket design by John Fontana; book/jacket designed by Erich Hobbing

reference photohttps://www.eveningstarbooks.net/pages/books/000015284/stephen-king/hearts-in-atlantisreference photohttps://www.biblio.com/book/hearts-atlantis-stephen-king/d/1430993081
Book-club edition & fakes — how to spot a wrong copyA Hearts in Atlantis Book Club Edition (BCE) has the same blue boards/black spine but: (1) the front jacket flap shows NO printed price (no "$28.00"), often with "Book Club Edition" printed at the lower front flap; (2) the copyright page LACKS the full Scribner number line (no "1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2"); (3) a small blind-stamp (indented dot/square/circle) is usually pressed into the lower-right corner of the REAR board; (4) noticeably smaller trim, thinner/lighter bulk, cheaper paper, glued rather than sewn. The book-club printing differs from the trade ISBN 0-684-85351-5. BCE copies sell for a few dollars vs. the trade first.

Also watch for: Watch for: (1) price-clipped jackets passed as unclipped — confirm "$28.00" is intact at the top of the front flap; (2) MARRIED jackets — a later-printing or BCE jacket on a first-printing book or vice versa (verify the number line in the book AND the price on the jacket together); (3) BCEs misrepresented as firsts (check for blind-stamp, missing price, missing number line, smaller trim); (4) ex-library copies (stamps, pockets, spine labels); (5) remainder marks on the bottom text block; (6) facsimile/reproduction jackets (check paper stock/printing quality); (7) the UK Hodder & Stoughton first sold as "the" first edition.

Print run & scarcity

FORMAT: Trade hardcover, Scribner (New York), published Sept 14, 1999, $28.00, 528 pp. First-printing ID points: full number line '1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2' on the copyright page. Book-of-the-Month Club main selection.\n\nFIRST-PRINTING QUANTITY — UNDOCUMENTED: The primary collector reference stephenkingcollector.com lists it verbatim as 'A first edition of ??? copies.' The King-collector Palaver/TheDarkTower.org sales-figures thread lists Hearts in Atlantis with '?' (unknown). No dealer listing (rarebookcellar, johnatkinsonbooks, firstandfine, hermitagebooks, biblio) states a print-run number.\n\nCAUTION ON '1,750,000': A figure of '1,750,000 first printing' was surfaced repeatedly by the search-engine AI summaries, but it does NOT appear on any actual page I fetched (PW, stephenkingcollector, the dealer listings, the Palaver thread). I treat it as UNVERIFIED / likely a summarizer hallucination and do NOT report it as fact. As a #1 bestseller by King at peak popularity, a first printing well into six or low-seven figures is plausible, but no cited source confirms a number.\n\nLIMITED EDITIONS: There was NO true signed/numbered/lettered limited edition of this title (no Donald M. Grant / small-press state). 'Signed' copies on the market are simply the trade Scribner first edition autographed by King in person (signed/dated on the front free endpaper) — not a separate limitation. (A handful of one-off bespoke leather-rebound sets exist via dealers, e.g. a 4-set rebind, but those are post-publication custom bindings, not a publisher limited edition.)\n\nThe Carrie ~30,000 reference figure was deliberately not reused — this title is a different, much larger commercial release and its quantity is simply not on the public record.

First-state points & errata

No widely-documented internal text erratum or first-state vs later-state point is recorded for this title. The first printing is identified by the edition statement + number line and the $28.00 unclipped jacket. UNVERIFIED whether any typo distinguishes states — none is noted in standard collector references.

Limited & signed editions

No Scribner signed/numbered or traycased limited was issued for the US first. UNVERIFIED that any contemporaneous small-press limited exists for this title — none is recorded. Signed trade copies (King signature on an ordinary first printing) exist but are not a separate edition.

Market value estimate

~$25–$75

Assumes a genuine first edition / first printing in near-fine to fine condition (clean copy, unclipped jacket). Lesser condition is worth less.

No confirmed sale found, so this is rated at no less than its original jacket price — a true first/first should hold at least retail in near-fine/fine condition. Soft estimate from dealer listings (treat as approximate): $25–75 (unsigned true first, fine/fine, unclipped)

Book-club edition (the trap): $5–15. The BOMC/book-club edition (slightly smaller, blind-stamp dot/square on lower rear board, NO price on jacket flap, often a printed gutter code instead of a true number line) is the dominant trap and is near-worthless. Ex-library and price-clipped copies are similarly junk-value. — a fraction of a true first; never pay first-edition money for one.

Condition-sensitive only at the margins because supply is huge — a non-fine unsigned copy is essentially a $5–15 reading copy. The single biggest separator of a real first from the mislisted copies on THIS title: confirm the FULL number line "1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2" on the copyright page AND a $28.00 price intact on the front jacket flap AND no blind-stamp on the rear board. The Doubleday/Viking "gutter code" point named in many King guides does NOT apply here — that is for older King titles; a gutter code on a 1999 Scribner copy actually flags a BOOK-CLUB edition. Signed is the entire value story: an authentic full King signature (he signed sparingly post-1990s) takes a $25–75 book to $250–600 fine/fine; a dated inscription or association copy commands more. Demand JSA/PSA or a credible dealer provenance — forged King signatures are rampant.

Value sources:

Sources

confidence: high — price ($28.00, front flap), number line (1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2), quarter-black-over-blue-boards binding with red spine peace-sign, ISBN 0-684-85351-5, and jacket credits (Heffernan/PHX, Fontana, Hobbing) are each cross-confirmed by two or more independent collector sources. Lower-confidence/UNVERIFIED: exact copyright-page edition-statement string, topstain, and any internal first-state erratum — none documented in the references consulted.← Back to all titles