Secret Teachings Of All Ages- Manly Palmer Hall

I've collected some information about this book over time. In particular the first five printings in 1928.

There were five printings in 1928 of this Manly Hall Palmers Secret Teachings of all Ages (also known as: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosiccucian Symbolical Philosophy) .

The book is HUGE (about 12.5" x 19") with 49 full colour plates, hand painted (blue) roman page numbers and orange rubrics (large initial leters), watermarked paper that reads "Alexandra Japan Made in U.S.A." and a lovely elephant hide like paper cover and slipcase. Some were signed by Manly Palmer Hall.

I recall reading that the initial editions cost around $100.... to put this in perspective a base model Model T Ford in 1927 cost $360!

Here's a snippet from the introduction written by Hall.

The pre-publication sale of this book has been without known precedent in book history. The subscription list for the first edition of 550 copies was entirely closed a year before the manuscript was placed in the printer's hands. The second, or King Solomon, edition, consisting of 550 copies, and the third, or Theosophical, edition, consisting of 200 copies, were sold before the finished volume was received from the printer. For so ambitious a production, this constitutes a unique achievement. The credit for this extraordinary sales program belongs to Mrs. Maud F. Galigher, who had as her ideal not to sell the book in the commercial sense of the word but to place it in the hands of those particularly interested in the subject matter it contains. Valuable assistance in this respect was also rendered by numerous friends who had attended my lectures and who without compensation undertook and successfully accomplished the distribution of the book.

Two later editions "The Rosicrucian Edition" (100 copies) and the " Fifth Edition" (800 copies) were published in 1928.

This gives us a total of

First (Subscriber's) Edition 550
King Solomon Edition 550
Theosophical Rdition 200
Rosicrucian Edition 100
Fifth Edition 800
Total 2200 Copies

The next printing (Sixth edition) was in 1936 with black and white plates instead of the marvellous coloured illustrations by J. Augustus Knapp. Nevertheless it was still an impressive volume.

An on-line version of this book is available here