# Is "A Treatise of Human Nature" by David Hume a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume (John Noon, London, 1739) is identified by: Published anonymously - Hume's name appears nowhere in the first edition, so any title page naming him as author is a later edition. London is the true first; Hume wrote in English and there is no competing foreign or original-language edition, so the whole precedence question is the Noon/Longman sequence itself.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Published anonymously - Hume's name appears nowhere in the first edition, so any title page naming him as author is a later edition
- Volumes I (Of the Understanding) and II (Of the Passions) were printed for John Noon and issued together in late January 1739; volume III (Of Morals) was printed for Thomas Longman and followed in late 1740, so a complete first edition necessarily carries two different publishers' imprints and two different dates on its title pages
- Octavo (a recorded copy measures about 198 x 118 mm)
- Collation of the Noon volumes: vol
- I [8], 475, [1] pp., the final leaf carrying the publisher's advertisement; vol
- II [4], 318 pp., with rear advertisement leaves called for by the standard bibliographies and frequently absent in surviving copies
- Publisher imprint reads John Noon, London

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | David Hume |
| Publisher | John Noon, London |
| Year | 1739 |
| True first | — |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Published anonymously - Hume's name appears nowhere in the first edition, so any title page naming him as author is a later edition |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Published anonymously - Hume's name appears nowhere in the first edition, so any title page naming him as author is a later edition. Volumes I (Of the Understanding) and II (Of the Passions) were printed for John Noon and issued together in late January 1739; volume III (Of Morals) was printed for Thomas Longman and followed in late 1740, so a complete first edition necessarily carries two different publishers' imprints and two different dates on its title pages. Octavo (a recorded copy measures about 198 x 118 mm). Collation of the Noon volumes: vol. I [8], 475, [1] pp., the final leaf carrying the publisher's advertisement; vol. II [4], 318 pp., with rear advertisement leaves called for by the standard bibliographies and frequently absent in surviving copies. The press run is generally given as about 1,000 copies. References: PMM 194; Jessop pp. 12-14; Fieser pp. 5-6.

## Is this the true first?
London is the true first; Hume wrote in English and there is no competing foreign or original-language edition, so the whole precedence question is the Noon/Longman sequence itself. The census claim is confirmed: vols. I-II John Noon 1739, vol. III Thomas Longman 1740. Because the third volume appeared roughly eighteen months later from a different house, the two Noon volumes are very often found alone - a two-volume set is not a complete first edition, and complete three-volume sets are genuinely rare. Sources consulted disagree on the month of vol. III (October 1740 vs. 5 November 1740), so only the year 1740 should be relied on.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club or reprint-society issue exists for the 1739-40 sheets. Later eighteenth- and nineteenth-century printings, and all modern scholarly editions (Selby-Bigge, Selby-Bigge/Nidditch, the Clarendon Hume), are separate editions rather than states of the first; the quickest tell is authorship on the title page, since the first edition is anonymous.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *A Treatise of Human Nature* by David Hume a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/a-treatise-of-human-nature
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.