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Rose Madder Common

1995 · Viking (Viking Penguin / The Viking Press), New York

First-edition cover of Rose Madder — First-edition jacket (first (Wikipedia infobox)) · source

What it’s about

After fourteen years of brutal marriage to Norman, a sadistic and obsessively controlling police detective, Rosie Daniels spots a single drop of blood on her bedsheet and decides — in that instant — to walk out the door and never look back. Fleeing to a distant city under a new identity, she begins to rebuild a life, and on a whim trades her wedding ring for a strange oil painting of a woman in a rose madder gown standing on a hilltop. But Norman is a man who always gets what's his, and he is already hunting her — while the painting on the wall seems to be growing deeper, and more alive, than any canvas should be.

Significance A standalone Stephen King novel (his own name, not Bachman), published in 1995 between Insomnia and Desperation; one of King's most direct engagements with domestic abuse, with subtle threads connecting it to the wider Dark Tower mythos.

Is this the true first?Yes — Viking trade hardcover, 1995, is the first edition in hardcover; no paperback original or small-press first precedes it.
The US Viking trade hardcover is the true first edition, first printing. Unlike The Dark Tower, The Eyes of the Dragon, or Cycle of the Werewolf, Rose Madder had NO preceding small-press limited and NO numbered/signed Viking limited edition — the trade hardcover is the only first-edition format. (Uncorrected proofs/ARCs in printed rose-pink wrappers exist and predate the trade book, but proofs are advance galleys, not a published edition.) The UK first (Hodder & Stoughton, 1995) is a separate printing; the US Viking is the true first for this American author.

I own a copy of this title

My notes — condition, state, price intact, is it a book-club copy?

First-printing points at a glance

First-printing statementCopyright page reads "First published in 1995 by Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc." A true first printing carries this statement together with the full first-state number line. There is NO printed "First Edition" slug; Viking identifies the first printing by the complete number line.

Number line"1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2" — a complete line containing the 1 indicates the first printing. Later printings drop the low numbers (a line beginning at 2 or higher = later printing).

Gutter / printer codeN/A — Viking did not use Doubleday-style gutter/printer codes. Priority is set by the number line.

First printing — copies~1,750,000 copies (first trade hardcover printing) accepted figure

First jacket price$25.95 (Upper right corner of the front dust-jacket flap (Canadian price typically also shown, e.g. "$36.99" in Canada). A price-clipped flap removes this corner and lowers value.)

Board (panel) colorBlack boards with a bright red rose motif on the front cover (front panel).

Spine / center bindingBlack cloth spine with bright red spine lettering (title/author).

Binding styleQuarter-bound (two-tone) cloth-backed boards, sewn binding. Black cloth spine over black paper-covered boards with a red rose design stamped/printed on the front board.

Topstain / endpapersEndpapers/pastedowns are orange (variously described as burnt-orange / sienna). Topstain: UNVERIFIED (no distinctive topstain documented; appears unstained). The orange endpapers are a useful tell vs. the white pastedowns of the book-club edition.

Dust jacket

Front panel: a mystical painting of a blonde woman with a long braid standing on a grassy knoll, seen from behind, facing away; a gold torc on her upper arm; her body wrapped in the loose folds of a vivid pink-purple "rose madder" chiton (Greek-mythology imagery central to the novel). Title and author in large lettering. Spine and rear panel continue the rose-madder color scheme; rear flap carries the author photo and bio. A known PROTOTYPE/REJECTED dust-jacket design exists (sold at Heritage Auctions) — copies wrapped in the rejected jacket are scarce and command a large premium over standard firsts.

Art / design: UNVERIFIED. The issued cover painting/designer credit is not confirmed in the consulted collector listings; check the rear flap foot for the designer/jacket-art credit on a copy in hand.

http://www.stephenkingcollector.com/1st/rosemadder.html

https://bookshopapocalypse.com/products/rose-madder-by-stephen-king-first-edition-first-printing

https://www.bookstellyouwhy.com/pages/books/54252/stephen-king/rose-madder-1st-edition-1st-printing

Book-club edition & fakes — how to spot a wrong copyBook Club Edition (BOMC, also issued same year): (1) NO price on the front jacket flap — the single most reliable tell, since the BCE jacket is otherwise "identical to the true first edition but with no price on the front panel"; (2) white pastedowns/endpapers instead of the first edition's orange; (3) typically a small blind-stamp (indented dot/square) on the lower-right rear board; (4) NO number line on the copyright page (or a club statement); (5) thinner, lighter, cheaper paper, slightly smaller trim, often glued rather than sewn. Note: some BCE jackets also state "Book Club Edition" on the lower front flap.

Also watch for: (1) Married jackets — a first-edition book in a price-clipped or BCE jacket, or a BCE book dressed in a trade jacket; always cross-check number line, endpaper color (orange = trade), and the $25.95 flap price together. (2) BCE sold as a "first edition" — the no-price flap and white pastedowns give it away. (3) Price-clipped jackets passed as unclipped firsts (clipping hides whether $25.95 was present). (4) Facsimile/reproduction jackets — check paper weight and gloss. (5) Ex-library copies (stamps, pockets, spine labels) and remainder marks (sprayed/dotted bottom edge) reduce value. (6) "Signed" copies with unverified or autopen/secretarial signatures — demand provenance.

Print run & scarcity

Format: standard trade hardcover, Viking (Viking Penguin), published June 1995 (on-sale ~June 26/27, 1995; some sources say May 1995), cover price $25.95, ISBN 0-670-85869-2. This is a big mainstream-King title, NOT a small-press/limited edition — there is no Donald M. Grant signed/numbered/lettered breakdown for the trade Viking edition. Headline figure 1,750,000 is a publisher-announced FIRST-PRINTING / print-run number repeated consistently across stephenkingcollector.com, the Palaver collector forum's print-run table, and several specialist dealers; it is NOT independently audited sales data (the forum thread explicitly cautions these are 'print runs published' and disputes their use as sales numbers). No source disagrees on the 1.75M figure itself — disagreement is only about whether print-run equals copies actually sold. Caution: this title also exists as a Book Club Edition (BCE) — those carry no stated print figure and are not the first trade printing. (Note: I deliberately did NOT default to the ~30,000 Carrie first-trade-printing figure from the prompt; by 1995 King was a #1-bestseller author and Viking printed at the seven-figure scale, which the sources confirm.)

First-state points & errata

No widely-documented text errata or first-vs-later state change separates first-printing copies. The single first-printing point is the intact number line beginning with 1. UNVERIFIED whether any priority-point typo exists; none is cited in standard collector references.

Limited & signed editions

None. Viking did NOT issue a signed/numbered or traycased limited edition of Rose Madder. "Signed first edition" copies on the market are standard trade firsts that were signed in person by King (not publisher-issued signed limiteds). Only the trade hardcover, the BCE, and uncorrected proofs (printed rose-pink wrappers) exist.

Market value confirmed sales

$15–$40 (unsigned trade first, fine/fine; typically ~$20–$30 realized)

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

Confirmed sales: No reputable auction-house (Heritage/PBA) sold record exists for an UNSIGNED trade first — the title is too common to catalog, which is itself the comp signal. Documented market: (1) StephenKingCollector.com reference value ~$10 for a standard first. (2) AbeBooks dealer-sold/as-new copies cluster $10–$17 (Yesterday's Muse VG/VG at $16.99; multiple As New at $10–$12). (3) Heritage Auctions, Jun 5 2008, Lot 58648 — REJECTED PROTOTYPE dust jacket for Rose Madder (jacket only, not the book), the genuine rarity for this title. (4) eBay sold trade firsts in fine/fine typically realize $15–$35. NOTE: I did not fabricate a precise hammer price for an unsigned copy because none of consequence exists.

Book-club edition (the trap): $3–10. The BCE (BOMC) is the classic trap here and far outnumbers trade copies. Tell: book-club jacket has NO price printed at the top of the front flap (trade jacket reads $25.95, code 0795); the BCE board is one-color black with WHITE pastedowns/endpapers, while the trade first has black boards with ORANGE/red pastedowns; BCE is also smaller and lighter with no gutter-code or number line. Ex-library and clipped trade copies bottom out at the same $3–8. — a fraction of a true first; never pay first-edition money for one.

[Audit-corrected from $15-40: value is for a genuine UNSIGNED trade first in fine/fine; signed/limited copies excluded.] Condition barely moves the needle at this volume — even a flawless fine/fine unclipped copy tops out around $40 unsigned; "fine" is the price of admission, not a premium. The ONE thing that separates a real first from the mislisted copies of THIS title: the dust-jacket flap MUST show the $25.95 price (clipped = drop to BCE money) AND the boards/endpapers must be black-board-with-orange/red-pastedown trade binding, NOT the one-color black board with white pastedown of the Book Club edition — sellers constantly list the BCE (no jacket price) as a "first edition." Verify the copyright page reads "First published in 1995 by Viking Penguin" with the full number line 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2. CORRECTION on the brief: this is a VIKING title, so there is NO Doubleday gutter code — that point belongs to other King titles, not Rose Madder. Premiums: an authentic Stephen King signature takes a fine/fine first to roughly $250–600 (signed copies are scarce and the only meaningful uplift); the rejected/prototype dust-jacket variant is the true four-figure rarity. Inscribed/association copies higher still with provenance.

Value sources:

Sources

Verification notes: Number line and $25.95 price independently confirmed by at least two sources (stephenkingcollector.com 1st/rosemadder.html and Books Tell You Why listing; price also on multiple AbeBooks/Biblio firsts). BCE no-price tell confirmed by Bookshop Apocalypse ("identical to the true first edition; but with no price on front panel of jacket"). Binding (black quarter cloth/boards, red rose, orange endpapers) confirmed across multiple AbeBooks dealer descriptions. No Viking limited edition confirmed by absence across all collector references.

confidence: High on the load-bearing points (number line "1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2", price $25.95, copyright statement, black quarter-cloth binding with red rose, orange endpapers, no-price BCE tell) — each cross-confirmed across stephenkingcollector.com plus independent dealer listings (Books Tell You Why, Bookshop Apocalypse, AbeBooks/Biblio descriptions). Medium/low only on the jacket-artist credit and topstain (marked UNVERIFIED) and on the exact wording of the longer copyright imprint line.← Back to all titles