2 Elizabeth Bowen first editions are documented on this shelf, from The Death of the Heart (1938) to The Heat of the Day (1949) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Elizabeth Bowen title from later printings and book-club copies — the publisher and year to expect, the number-line or edition-statement conventions, and the tells that show up in online listings.

Identification only, per the house rule: no prices and no appraisals here. Checking a Elizabeth Bowen copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.

The Death of the Heart — 1938 · Victor GollanczFirst edition, first impression: Victor Gollancz, London, 1938; octavo, bound in the publisher's black cloth with the spine lettered in gilt — the standard Gollancz binding of the period, corroborated by multiple independent ABA/ILAB/PBFA dealer descriptions. The copyright-page verso of a first impression carries the 'First published 1938' line with no added reprint or impression statement; Gollancz stated its…. True first is Victor Gollancz, London, 1938 — the census claim is confirmed. The first American edition is Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1939, a separate setting of 418 pp.; dealers identify first printings of it as such, and it carries a priced jacket with the price at the front flap. Both the Gollancz 1938 and the Knopf 1939 are collected, but the London edition has clear precedence. The lower American page count…. The Death of the Heart was a Book Society choice, and copies of the true Gollancz first are found with the official 'The Book Society' bookplate pasted to the front free endpaper, sometimes carrying Bowen's signature. That bookplate is NOT a book-club-reprint tell: it appears in the publisher's own first edition and should not be mistaken for a club issue. Later Gollancz printings are stated on the copyright-page….
The Heat of the Day — 1949 · Jonathan CapeBritish first: London, Jonathan Cape, 1949; original beige/cream cloth, spine (and front board) lettered in red; collation (4)+319 pp. The American first (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1949) is a physically distinct book — green cloth, gilt spine, 372 pp. Knopf additionally issued a signed limited edition of 500 copies (signed by Bowen on the limitation leaf). A first-issue jacket is a priced jacket with the price…. Cape (London) and Knopf (New York) both appeared in 1949 and are conventionally treated as essentially simultaneous; for this Anglo-Irish author collectors conventionally prefer the London Cape issue as the true first. Exact month-level precedence between the two 1949 editions is NOT firmly documented in the sources consulted, so precedence is given as collecting convention rather than established fact. The Knopf…. Avoid the Book Society issue: the Cape edition was also supplied to The Book Society (a book club), and dealers specifically distinguish the true Cape first impression from the Book Society version. Later Cape / Knopf reprints and modern reissues (Penguin, Vintage, Anchor) are later 'first thus.'.

More Literary Fiction (US) & Award Winners shelves: Elizabeth Gaskell, E.M. Forster, Ernest Hemingway, Ernest J. Gaines, Erskine Caldwell, Eudora Welty.

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