Unless you count the withdrawn American edition of The Atrocity Exhibition (which is not the true first, as the Cape (which I have) precedes), the true first of J. G. Ballard’s Crash is (along with The Drowned World) among Ballard’s most expensive and difficult first editions. I’d been looking for an affordable copy of Crash for a while, and I finally found one:
Ballard, J. G. Crash. Jonathan Cape, 1973. First edition hardback, an Ex-Library copy with all the usual flaws, including stamps to pages and page block edges, in a dust jacket that, while intact, has been glued to the book, with a long, thin library sticker across the front, spine, back and rear flap, and a large square library affixed to rear, plus some glue wrinkling; call it a Good/Good Ex-Lib copy. Goodard and Pringle, J. G. Ballard: The First Twenty Years 101. Currey, page 23. Bought off an Australian bookseller for $68 plus shipping.
Tags: Books, J. G. Ballard, Science Fiction