# Is "Brat Farrar" by Josephine Tey a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey (Peter Davies, 1949) is identified by: The true first is Peter Davies, London, 1949; the Library of Congress catalogues it as "London, P. UK precedes US, and the census claim is confirmed as written.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- CONFIRMED. The true first is Peter Davies, London, 1949; the Library of Congress catalogues it as "London, P. Davies [1949]", the square brackets indicating the year is supplied by the cataloguer and is not printed on the title page
- The Classic Crime Fiction first-edition checklist records the binding as brown cloth with gilt spine lettering and a priced jacket (price present at the flap); a Cotswold Internet Books dealer description of a 1949 Peter Davies copy independently gives the cloth as tan with a faded, worn spine, so the shade is reported variously as brown/tan and a copy should not be rejected on that basis alone
- Peter Davies is not covered by any of the standard publisher-identification guides consulted (qbbooks, ILAB), so no publisher-specific rule can be cited: identification rests on the copyright-page statement together with the absence of any later-impression or "reprinted" notice, and there is no number line (British publishers of this period did not use them)
- The first American edition is Macmillan, New York, 1950 (copyright 1949) per the Library of Congress record "New York, Macmillan, 1950 [c1949]"; under the Macmillan (US) convention in force from mid-1936 it states "First printing" on the copyright page
- Publisher imprint reads Peter Davies
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Josephine Tey |
| Publisher | Peter Davies |
| Year | 1949 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | CONFIRMED. The true first is Peter Davies, London, 1949; the Library of Congress catalogues it as "London, P. Davies [1949]", the square… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
CONFIRMED. The true first is Peter Davies, London, 1949; the Library of Congress catalogues it as "London, P. Davies [1949]", the square brackets indicating the year is supplied by the cataloguer and is not printed on the title page. The Classic Crime Fiction first-edition checklist records the binding as brown cloth with gilt spine lettering and a priced jacket (price present at the flap); a Cotswold Internet Books dealer description of a 1949 Peter Davies copy independently gives the cloth as tan with a faded, worn spine, so the shade is reported variously as brown/tan and a copy should not be rejected on that basis alone. Peter Davies is not covered by any of the standard publisher-identification guides consulted (qbbooks, ILAB), so no publisher-specific rule can be cited: identification rests on the copyright-page statement together with the absence of any later-impression or "reprinted" notice, and there is no number line (British publishers of this period did not use them). The first American edition is Macmillan, New York, 1950 (copyright 1949) per the Library of Congress record "New York, Macmillan, 1950 [c1949]"; under the Macmillan (US) convention in force from mid-1936 it states "First printing" on the copyright page.

## Is this the true first?
UK precedes US, and the census claim is confirmed as written. Peter Davies, London, 1949 is the true first; Macmillan, New York, 1950 (copyright 1949) is the first American edition and is collected in its own right — name both. "Come and Kill Me" is not a separate work and not a first: it is the retitled US Pocket Books paperback issue of 1951, a first-thus trap. Likewise the Macmillan "Three by Tey" omnibus (New York, 1954) and the R. Bentley (Cambridge, Mass., 1981) issue, which the Library of Congress records as "Reprinted from the author's Three by Tey", are reprints.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue points specific to this title are documented in the sources consulted; the general tells apply and should be checked. On the US side, a Doubleday/Macmillan-era book-club copy typically shows an unpriced jacket flap or "Book Club Edition" printed at the flap, a blind stamp debossed into the rear board near the spine, and a lighter, smaller bulk than the trade issue. The Collier Books (1988, c1950) and R. Bentley (1981) issues are later reprints, not book clubs, and are frequently miscatalogued as firsts because they carry the 1949/1950 copyright date.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Brat Farrar* by Josephine Tey a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/brat-farrar
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.