# Is "At Swim-Two-Birds" by Flann O'Brien a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien (Longmans, Green & Co., 1939) is identified by: First published by Longmans, Green & Co., London, on 13 March 1939, the author's debut novel. Longmans, Green & Co.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First published by Longmans, Green & Co., London, on 13 March 1939, the author's debut novel
- The first issue is bound in publisher's black cloth with the spine lettered in gilt and a green top-stain; the scarce first-issue jacket carries a Graham Greene endorsement on the rear panel and the price present at the flap
- A second issue exists, bound up by Longmans in grey cloth from unbound sheets of the same 1939 printing that survived the bombing of the publisher's London premises — because the sheets are identical, the binding cloth colour (black versus grey) is the operative point, not anything in the text
- The novel sold barely more than 240 copies before the war and almost all unsold stock was incinerated in the 1940 raid on Longmans' Paternoster Row premises, so copies in the original jacket are rarely met with; the jacket is the single hardest element to find
- Publisher imprint reads Longmans, Green & Co.
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Flann O'Brien |
| Publisher | Longmans, Green & Co. |
| Year | 1939 |
| True first | American edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | First published by Longmans, Green & Co., London, on 13 March 1939, the author's debut novel |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
First published by Longmans, Green & Co., London, on 13 March 1939, the author's debut novel. The first issue is bound in publisher's black cloth with the spine lettered in gilt and a green top-stain; the scarce first-issue jacket carries a Graham Greene endorsement on the rear panel and the price present at the flap. A second issue exists, bound up by Longmans in grey cloth from unbound sheets of the same 1939 printing that survived the bombing of the publisher's London premises — because the sheets are identical, the binding cloth colour (black versus grey) is the operative point, not anything in the text. The novel sold barely more than 240 copies before the war and almost all unsold stock was incinerated in the 1940 raid on Longmans' Paternoster Row premises, so copies in the original jacket are rarely met with; the jacket is the single hardest element to find.

## Is this the true first?
Longmans, Green & Co. (London), 1939, is the true first and the only appearance under this imprint in the author's lifetime. Pantheon Books (New York) issued the first American edition in 1951, and it is a genuine trap: the Pantheon copyright page states only 'First published 1939' and carries no American date, so it is regularly mistaken for the London first. The Pantheon issue is identified instead by its yellow paper-covered boards lettered in black over a black cloth spine lettered in yellow, with a yellow jacket printed in black. Wikipedia dates the Pantheon reissue to 1950, but the dealer catalogues consulted (Ulysses Rare Books, Second Story Books) and the trade listings date it 1951.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club edition of the 1939 Longmans printing is documented in the sources consulted. The grey-cloth second issue is a publisher's rebinding of surviving first-printing sheets — not a club or reprint edition — and is collected in its own right. The principal reprint tell for this title remains the 1951 Pantheon American issue, whose '1939' copyright line misleads.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *At Swim-Two-Birds* by Flann O'Brien a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/at-swim-two-birds
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.