# Is "Bodas de sangre (Blood Wedding)" by Federico García Lorca a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Bodas de sangre (Blood Wedding) by Federico García Lorca (Ediciones del Árbol / revista Cruz y Raya, 1936) is identified by: First edition in book form, printed in Madrid for José Bergamín's review Cruz y Raya under its book imprint Ediciones del Árbol, in an edition of 1,100 copies — the limitation figure is the primary point and is corroborated across Spanish trade and institutional sources. No language-precedence contest: this is the Spanish original and the only first-edition candidate.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition in book form, printed in Madrid for José Bergamín's review Cruz y Raya under its book imprint Ediciones del Árbol, in an edition of 1,100 copies — the limitation figure is the primary point and is corroborated across Spanish trade and institutional sources
- Full title 'Bodas de sangre (Tragedia en tres actos y siete cuadros)'
- 125 pp. + 1 leaf, small 4to, roughly 23 x 17 cm, issued in rústica (printed wrappers) with flaps
- The dating is dual and is itself an identification point: the imprint is recorded as 1935 while the colophon is dated 31 January 1936, so catalogues and dealers legitimately cite either year for the same first edition — a copy described as '1935' and one described as '1936' are not necessarily different editions, and the year alone should never be used to separate them
- The first-edition text predates the author's 1936 Barcelona revisions and carries copying errors corrected in later editions, so textual state and imprint agree
- Publisher imprint reads Ediciones del Árbol / revista Cruz y Raya
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Federico García Lorca |
| Publisher | Ediciones del Árbol / revista Cruz y Raya |
| Year | 1936 |
| True first | — |
| Format | Poetry |
| Key point | First edition in book form, printed in Madrid for José Bergamín's review Cruz y Raya under its book imprint Ediciones del Árbol, in an… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
First edition in book form, printed in Madrid for José Bergamín's review Cruz y Raya under its book imprint Ediciones del Árbol, in an edition of 1,100 copies — the limitation figure is the primary point and is corroborated across Spanish trade and institutional sources. Full title 'Bodas de sangre (Tragedia en tres actos y siete cuadros)'; 125 pp. + 1 leaf, small 4to, roughly 23 x 17 cm, issued in rústica (printed wrappers) with flaps. The dating is dual and is itself an identification point: the imprint is recorded as 1935 while the colophon is dated 31 January 1936, so catalogues and dealers legitimately cite either year for the same first edition — a copy described as '1935' and one described as '1936' are not necessarily different editions, and the year alone should never be used to separate them. The first-edition text predates the author's 1936 Barcelona revisions and carries copying errors corrected in later editions, so textual state and imprint agree.

## Is this the true first?
No language-precedence contest: this is the Spanish original and the only first-edition candidate. It is the only one of Lorca's plays published in book form during his lifetime; the play premiered at the Teatro Beatriz, Madrid, on 8 March 1933, nearly three years before printing, so no earlier book-form 'first' can exist. English translations follow the Spanish original and hold no precedence. The play was staged in English in New York in 1935 as 'Bitter Oleander' in José Weissberger's translation, but that production predates any published English text; the census note's claim of a 1939 first English translation could not be confirmed against two independent sources naming a translator and publisher, so no English first is asserted here.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club edition. The reprint field is the real hazard: Guillermo de Torre's Losada (Buenos Aires) Obras completas texts and all modern Spanish trade editions (Alianza, Cátedra, Debolsillo and others) are reprints with no first-edition standing. Sources also record that a facsimile of the first edition is freely consultable in the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica — a facsimile is not a first, and its page images match the original exactly.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Bodas de sangre (Blood Wedding)* by Federico García Lorca a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/bodas-de-sangre-blood-wedding
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.