# Is "A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle" by Hugh MacDiarmid a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle by Hugh MacDiarmid (William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London, 1926) is identified by: True first: William Blackwood & Sons Ltd, Edinburgh and London, 1926; octavo (approx. Scottish original and the only edition that counts as the first: Blackwood, Edinburgh and London, 1926.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- True first: William Blackwood & Sons Ltd, Edinburgh and London, 1926; octavo (approx
- 19 x 13 cm), viii + 108 pp, with the poet's glossary of Scots at the end
- The title page gives the author as 'Hugh M'Diarmid' — the M-apostrophe form, not 'MacDiarmid' — which is a fast first-look tell
- First-issue binding: original dark blue cloth, spine and front board lettered in gilt, the front board with a double-rule border in blind enclosing a gilt vignette; the jacket is a thick sandy/buff sugar-paper typographic wrapper and is very seldom present
- A secondary binding exists within the same printing (Blackwood's own records, as reported by the collector Richie McCaffery, account for 525 copies across primary and secondary bindings), so the 1926 Blackwood imprint and the viii + 108 collation — not the binding alone — settle the edition; dealers describe the blue cloth with gilt vignette as 'the correct first issue'
- Publisher imprint reads William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Hugh MacDiarmid |
| Publisher | William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London |
| Year | 1926 |
| True first | American edition |
| Format | Poetry |
| Key point | True first: William Blackwood & Sons Ltd, Edinburgh and London, 1926; octavo (approx |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
True first: William Blackwood & Sons Ltd, Edinburgh and London, 1926; octavo (approx. 19 x 13 cm), viii + 108 pp, with the poet's glossary of Scots at the end. The title page gives the author as 'Hugh M'Diarmid' — the M-apostrophe form, not 'MacDiarmid' — which is a fast first-look tell. First-issue binding: original dark blue cloth, spine and front board lettered in gilt, the front board with a double-rule border in blind enclosing a gilt vignette; the jacket is a thick sandy/buff sugar-paper typographic wrapper and is very seldom present. A secondary binding exists within the same printing (Blackwood's own records, as reported by the collector Richie McCaffery, account for 525 copies across primary and secondary bindings), so the 1926 Blackwood imprint and the viii + 108 collation — not the binding alone — settle the edition; dealers describe the blue cloth with gilt vignette as 'the correct first issue'.

## Is this the true first?
Scottish original and the only edition that counts as the first: Blackwood, Edinburgh and London, 1926. There was no contemporaneous American or London-trade edition. The first US publication came decades later — an annotated edition from the University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1971 — which is a 'first thus', as are the later Scottish reprints (the 200 Burns Club, Edinburgh, 1956; Caledonian Press; Castle Wynd Printers) and the Scottish Academic Press annotated texts. Sales of the 1926 sheets were poor by MacDiarmid's own account and copies were pulped, which is why the first is scarce and why later reset texts dominate the market.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club edition is documented. The reprint tells are simply imprint and setting: any copy not bearing the William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh 1926 imprint with the viii + 108 collation is a later reset text — the 1956 200 Burns Club issue, the Caledonian Press and Castle Wynd Printers reprints, the Scottish Academic Press annotated editions and the Birlinn (2008) issue among them.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle* by Hugh MacDiarmid a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/a-drunk-man-looks-at-the-thistle
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.