# Is "Briggflatts" by Basil Bunting a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Briggflatts by Basil Bunting (Fulcrum Press, London, 1966) is identified by: True first book edition: Briggflatts: An Autobiography, London: Goliard Press for Fulcrum Press, 1966. UK book first (Fulcrum, 1966), but with American periodical precedence: the poem's first appearance in print was in Poetry (Chicago), January 1966, months before the Fulcrum book appeared later that year; it had been read publicly at Morden Tower, Newcastle, on 22 December 1965.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- True first book edition: Briggflatts: An Autobiography, London: Goliard Press for Fulcrum Press, 1966
- Quarto/folio, approx
- 320 x 250 mm, unpaginated; title and full-page titles printed in red and black, with illustrations and decorative borders after Barry Hall and Nick Strausfeld, printed by Tom Raworth and Barry Hall at Goliard Press
- Guedalla A6
- The edition was 500 copies in three simultaneous issues: 374 in printed card wrappers
- 100 bound in cloth with the spine lettered in gilt, in a green dust jacket printed in red and black (Guedalla A6b); and 26 copies lettered A–Z, specially bound in red pebbled leather-grain covers and signed by Bunting
- Publisher imprint reads Fulcrum Press, London

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Basil Bunting |
| Publisher | Fulcrum Press, London |
| Year | 1966 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Poetry |
| Key point | True first book edition: Briggflatts: An Autobiography, London: Goliard Press for Fulcrum Press, 1966 |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
True first book edition: Briggflatts: An Autobiography, London: Goliard Press for Fulcrum Press, 1966. Quarto/folio, approx. 320 x 250 mm, unpaginated; title and full-page titles printed in red and black, with illustrations and decorative borders after Barry Hall and Nick Strausfeld, printed by Tom Raworth and Barry Hall at Goliard Press. Guedalla A6. The edition was 500 copies in three simultaneous issues: 374 in printed card wrappers; 100 bound in cloth with the spine lettered in gilt, in a green dust jacket printed in red and black (Guedalla A6b); and 26 copies lettered A–Z, specially bound in red pebbled leather-grain covers and signed by Bunting. The limitation statement is the tell — a same-year second impression is offered by dealers as a 'second edition' and lacks it.

## Is this the true first?
UK book first (Fulcrum, 1966), but with American periodical precedence: the poem's first appearance in print was in Poetry (Chicago), January 1966, months before the Fulcrum book appeared later that year; it had been read publicly at Morden Tower, Newcastle, on 22 December 1965. No separate American first edition of Briggflatts as a book is recorded — American readers met the poem in Poetry and then in the collected editions. So the Fulcrum 1966 volume is the only book first, in its three issues.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club edition. Reprint tells: a second impression appeared in the same year, 1966, in wrappers and without the 500-copy limitation — dealers list it as 'second edition (same year as first)'; the 2009 Bloodaxe edition (issued with an audio recording Bunting made in 1967 and a DVD of Peter Bell's 1982 film) and the 2016 Faber critical edition are 'first thus'. Appearances in Fulcrum's Collected Poems (1968) and later collected editions are collections, not firsts.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Briggflatts* by Basil Bunting a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/briggflatts
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.