# Is "American Psycho" by Bret Easton Ellis a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (Vintage Contemporaries, 1991) is identified by: Paperback original — there is no jacket, the printed wrapper is the binding. TRUE FIRST IS THE US PAPERBACK ORIGINAL — census claim confirmed.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Paperback original — there is no jacket, the printed wrapper is the binding
- Vintage Contemporaries, New York, March 1991
- ISBN 0-679-73577-1
- First printing: the last line of the copyright page carries a full descending number line, 10 down to 1, double-spaced; the wrapper shows the original Vintage colophon and the minimalist original design
- Later-printing tells: a number line sequenced odds-to-evens (1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2), or any line containing a letter in place of a digit; a revised rear-cover price; and revised back-matter advertising — a copy advertising 'Imperial Bedrooms' (published 2010) is self-evidently late
- CAUTION: at least one dealer listing describes a copy with an odds-to-evens line as a first edition
- Publisher imprint reads Vintage Contemporaries

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Bret Easton Ellis |
| Publisher | Vintage Contemporaries |
| Year | 1991 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Paperback original — there is no jacket, the printed wrapper is the binding |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Paperback original — there is no jacket, the printed wrapper is the binding. Vintage Contemporaries, New York, March 1991; ISBN 0-679-73577-1; 399 pp. First printing: the last line of the copyright page carries a full descending number line, 10 down to 1, double-spaced; the wrapper shows the original Vintage colophon and the minimalist original design. Later-printing tells: a number line sequenced odds-to-evens (1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2), or any line containing a letter in place of a digit; a revised rear-cover price; and revised back-matter advertising — a copy advertising 'Imperial Bedrooms' (published 2010) is self-evidently late. CAUTION: at least one dealer listing describes a copy with an odds-to-evens line as a first edition. It is not; on Red Fox Rare Books' points page that sequence is the marker of a later printing, and the 'FIRST EDITION' words alone on a Vintage copyright page do not establish first printing without the descending line.

## Is this the true first?
TRUE FIRST IS THE US PAPERBACK ORIGINAL — census claim confirmed. Simon & Schuster had the novel under contract for conventional hardcover publication and cancelled roughly three months before release over the book's content; Vintage acquired it and issued it as a Vintage Contemporaries trade paperback original in March 1991, so no American hardcover first edition exists. Picador (London) published the first UK edition — also a paperback — on 26 April 1991, after the Vintage. FIRST-THUS TRAP: Picador issued the first-ever hardback of the novel only in 1998, and a US hardcover appeared from Centipede Press in 2012; both are firsts thus, not first editions, and neither displaces the 1991 Vintage Contemporaries wrapper.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club edition documented. The functional equivalents here are later Vintage printings passed as firsts: identify them by the odds-to-evens or letter-bearing number line, the revised rear-cover price, the later Vintage logo, and back-matter advertising titles published after 1991.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *American Psycho* by Bret Easton Ellis a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/american-psycho
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.