2 Francis Parkman first editions are documented on this shelf, from The Oregon Trail (1849) to The Conspiracy of Pontiac (1851) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Francis Parkman 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 Francis Parkman copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.

The Oregon Trail — 1849 · George P. PutnamFirst published in book form in 1849 by George P. Putnam, New York, under the fuller title 'The California and Oregon Trail: Being Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life' — in publisher's cloth (1849 trade books were issued without dust jackets). First-printing / first-issue points: Binding 'A,' with the author's surname in a SANS-SERIF typeface on the spine (found only in the first printing); the…. The 1849 George P. Putnam edition titled 'The California and Oregon Trail' is the true first in book form. The narrative first appeared serially in the Knickerbocker Magazine (21 installments, 1847-49) as 'The Oregon Trail; or, A Summer's Journey Out of Bounds' — so 'Oregon Trail' was in fact the ORIGINAL title, and Putnam prepended 'California' for the book to exploit the 1849 Gold Rush. The familiar short title…. No book-club edition in the modern sense. The persistent trap is title-driven: any copy titled simply 'The Oregon Trail' is NOT the 1849 first (which uses the longer 'California and Oregon Trail' title). The 1892 Little, Brown Remington-illustrated edition is a separate and much-loved 'first thus,' often mistaken for the true first because it carries the famous short title and lavish plates.
The Conspiracy of Pontiac — 1851 · Little, Brown and CompanyBoston: Little, Brown, 1851, a single octavo volume -- not yet split into the two volumes of Parkman's later revised printings -- collating xxiv, 630 pages with four maps, bound in brown cloth (Howes P100). This was Parkman's first published work of history, though not his first book overall: it followed his travel narrative "The Oregon Trail" (1849) by two years and opened the sequence of frontier and Indian-war…. Starting with an enlarged edition in 1870 -- which incorporated newly available Bouquet and Haldimand papers from the British Museum -- Little, Brown reset and reissued the work as a two-volume "revised edition," and later folded it into multivolume "Works of Francis Parkman" library sets; these two-volume printings, despite the similar title and publisher, are not the 1851 first edition.

More Nature, Western & Americana shelves: Frank Waters, Gretel Ehrlich, Harvey Fergusson, Helen Hunt Jackson, Ivan Turgenev, Jack Schaefer.

← All authors · All genres · part of the First-Edition Identification resource.