First official Beatles title reissued

Souvenir Press is republishing its 1963 title, Meet the Beatles, 51 years after its first release (November, £10).

The original edition was the first official book the band released, after Ernest Hecht, founder and publisher at Souvenir, saw them play live in Finsbury Park, London, and bought the rights from the band’s manager Brian Epstein. The 50th anniversary of the original, and the series of books about the band currently being written by Mark Lewisohn (The Beatles—All These Years series, Little, Brown) prompted Hecht to reissue the title.

The book will be re-released with no changes—except the price. The new edition will be priced at £10, while the original was two shillings and six pence. Tony Barrow—who wrote the original foreword and coined the phrase “The Fab Four”—offered to write an updated introduction, but Hecht wanted to keep the book exactly the same, in order for it to act as a piece of memorabilia.

The original edition is Souvenir’s biggest selling title of all time, selling more than one million copies. Hecht said: “We want to make sure every Beatles fanatic we know of knows that this book is coming out.”