# Is "A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South" by Anna Julia Cooper a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South by Anna Julia Cooper (The Aldine Printing House, 1892) is identified by: The first edition's title page reads 'A Voice from the South.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The first edition's title page reads 'A Voice from the South
- By a Black Woman of the South
- Xenia, Ohio: The Aldine Printing House, 1892' — Cooper's own name appears nowhere on the title page
- The first edition is an octavo of 304 pages, bound in the publisher's tan and crimson cloth lettered in gilt, with a gilt top edge, floral endpapers, and a tissue-guarded frontispiece portrait
- Cooper, then a teacher (and later principal) at Washington's M Street High School, argued in the book for the distinct standpoint of Black women within both racial-uplift and women's movements of her day
- Publisher imprint reads The Aldine Printing House
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Anna Julia Cooper |
| Publisher | The Aldine Printing House |
| Year | 1892 |
| True first | — |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | The first edition's title page reads 'A Voice from the South |
| Book-club edition exists? | — |

## Points of issue
The first edition's title page reads 'A Voice from the South. By a Black Woman of the South. Xenia, Ohio: The Aldine Printing House, 1892' — Cooper's own name appears nowhere on the title page. The first edition is an octavo of 304 pages, bound in the publisher's tan and crimson cloth lettered in gilt, with a gilt top edge, floral endpapers, and a tissue-guarded frontispiece portrait. Cooper, then a teacher (and later principal) at Washington's M Street High School, argued in the book for the distinct standpoint of Black women within both racial-uplift and women's movements of her day.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
The text was reissued in facsimile as part of the Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers (Oxford University Press, 1988, introduction by Mary Helen Washington); that modern facsimile is not the 1892 Aldine Printing House first edition.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South* by Anna Julia Cooper a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/a-voice-from-the-south-by-a-black-woman-of-the-south
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.