Man or Matter was originally published in 1951 in UK by Faber and Faber, and in the US by Harper and Brothers (which has evolved into the present HarperCollins publishing firm).

It is of interest to note a director of Faber and Faber at the time was T. S. Eliot, more generally well-known for his poetry, who referenced the work favorably.

For reasons unknown, however, the book was published without a copyright notice of any kind.  This was almost surely an oversight, but had the effect of technically placing the work into the public domain. 

This fact was noted at some point by contributors to the project Gutenberg intiative, and for some time, the scanned and edited text of the book has been available through the project Gutenberg web site, resulting in any number of ebook editions being published.  (See the entry here.)

In 1958, a second edition was published, again by the same respective publishers.  There are, on the whole, various generally quite minor edits and re-writes, in some cases to update to current science and technology.  The most immediately apparent change however are the re-ordering of a good number of chapters, and the addition and changing of others. 

It seems not unreasonable to suppose that at least one motivation for these changes was to produce a current work sufficiently distinct, as a derivative work, to warrant a defensible copyright, which the second edition has.

Insofar as the chapters are somewhat self-contained, and the development of the argument is built up using a variety of threads, this is not particularly problematic, except when trying to move between editions. As Lehrs describes in in the preface to the second edition:

“The original first chapter now opens the book as a kind of foreword, while the second chapter has been divided into two parts, making chapters I and II.  In some places the arguments has been worked out more extensively; elsewhere there are curtailments and even omissions, which where necessary, are explained in the text.”

For many years, the 1958 edition was unavailable and it was rather difficult to find either as a used book as no doubt the edition was rather small.  In 1985, six years after the author’s death in 1979, a new edition was made.  The editorial project has begun during Ernst Lehr’s lifetime and was supervised by Nick Thomas and as assisted by Peter Bortoft, and published by the Rudolf Steiner Press in the UK; and has been through various printings since and as such remains in print today.

The third edition also continues the practice of the first edition of moving some detailed historical material to appendices.

The author was natively German, but came to the UK as a war refugee where he was subject to restrictions as an enemy alien for the duration.  He eventually returned to Germany but lived a number of years in the UK and was involved with both the Camphill movement and Waldorf School as a teacher (he was one of the first teachers at the original Waldorf School in Stuttgart).  In 1953 he published a German version, a more or less direct translation, but one which could rely a bit more on the native German speakers familiarity with Goethe and other differences.  It is noteworthy that the first publication however was in English and the form of expression, in English, was entirely the work of the author, who demonstrates a masterful literary talent thereby.

It is freely understood that it is only by means of the availability of the public domain edition that the work can be published within this product, while at the same time, the most available print edition is, of course, the third edition, and as being the most current, is of course the recommended work for close study and reading.

A guide to quick correlation between the third and first editions is to be found here.