|
The 1938 Original Manuscript of the book Alcoholics Anonymous is now available for download. This electronic reproduction of the 1938 Original Manuscript is complete, including 22 personal stories. It's 202 pages in pdf format, so even mac users can view this doument. Download this reproduction of A.A. history!
Alcoholics Anonymous - Original Manuscript 919KB
The story behind the Manuscript
In June of 1938, there were two groups of men (and one woman) in Akron, Ohio, and New York City that had discovered a way for alcoholics to stay sober. One of the founders of this new fellowship, Bill Wilson, had been sober for an amazing three-and-a-half years and the other, Dr. Bob, hadn’t had a drink in three years.The groups decided to write a book explaining how they had gotten sober and what they had done to stay sober — in the hope of spreading the ‘good news’ of what they had accomplished.
By December of 1938, they had a working manuscript for the book. But, before the official publication, they decided to circulate some offset printed (what they called “multilith”) copies of the text for review by the group’s members and by a select number of doctors, psychiatrists and religious figures — asking for suggestions and final edits for the text before it went to press. There were some truly monumental changes made — perhaps most notably, in the editing of the text to seven of the twelve steps and a reworking of the ‘tone’ of the entire book.
Every page was open for changes and a colossal numbers of suggestions, for revisions were made — the vast majority of which were adopted. Just one example will suffice — on page 68 there were about 50-60 word changes made.
There was no notice of copyright nor notice of the multilith being a review or loan copy. As the multilithed manuscript was published, sold and distributed to the public without these notices, according to the Copyright Act of 1909, it and all subsequent printings were forever in the public domain.
The original manuscripts are very rare today, probably less than fifty are still in existence. The “Master Copy” of the Original Manuscript of the book sold in June of 2007 at an auction held at Sotheby’s in New York City for a hammer price of $850,000! There were apparently two separate printings, with either 21 or 22 stories. One had an apparent typo on the title page, an apostrophe in the word ALCOHOLIC'S.
By the end of January 1939, all the changes, corrections, criticisms, and evaluations had been accomplished, the remainder of the personal stories were finished, bringing the total to twenty-nine, and the big book ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS was ready to be published.
