# Is "Call It Sleep" by Henry Roth a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Call It Sleep by Henry Roth (Robert O. Ballou, 1934) is identified by: First edition, first printing: Robert O. US Robert O.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition, first printing: Robert O. Ballou, New York, 1934; vi (or v, [i]), 599 pp., octavo — the author's first book
- Bound in publisher's blue cloth with navy stamping on the spine, lettered in gilt, with a black topstain
- The jacket carries the decisive point: the first-state wrap-around pictorial jacket, designed by the muralist Stuyvesant Van Veen, has NO blurb from The Minneapolis Star
- The second printing, issued about a month after the first, wears a second-state jacket carrying blurbs from Edwin Seaver and Fred T. Marsh on the front flap — i.e. contemporary review quotes on the front flap indicate the second printing, not the first
- The jacket should be priced at the flap and unclipped
- The second printing reproduces the same Van Veen jacket art and is itself scarce, so jacket state — not artwork — is what separates them
- Publisher imprint reads Robert O. Ballou

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Henry Roth |
| Publisher | Robert O. Ballou |
| Year | 1934 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | First edition, first printing: Robert O. Ballou, New York, 1934; vi (or v, [i]), 599 pp., octavo — the author's first book |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
First edition, first printing: Robert O. Ballou, New York, 1934; vi (or v, [i]), 599 pp., octavo — the author's first book. Bound in publisher's blue cloth with navy stamping on the spine, lettered in gilt, with a black topstain. The jacket carries the decisive point: the first-state wrap-around pictorial jacket, designed by the muralist Stuyvesant Van Veen, has NO blurb from The Minneapolis Star. The second printing, issued about a month after the first, wears a second-state jacket carrying blurbs from Edwin Seaver and Fred T. Marsh on the front flap — i.e. contemporary review quotes on the front flap indicate the second printing, not the first. The jacket should be priced at the flap and unclipped. The second printing reproduces the same Van Veen jacket art and is itself scarce, so jacket state — not artwork — is what separates them.

## Is this the true first?
US Robert O. Ballou, New York, 1934 is the only true first; the census claim is confirmed. The novel sold roughly 4,000 copies and then lapsed out of print for close to thirty years. The first British edition is Michael Joseph, London, 1963, which appeared only in the wake of the rediscovery and is not a precedence contender; the 1964 Avon paperback, following Irving Howe's front-page New York Times Book Review notice of 25 October 1964, drove the revival.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue of the 1934 Ballou printing is documented in the sources consulted. The rediscovery-era issues are the 'first thus' traps: Michael Joseph (London, 1963), the 1964 Avon paperback, and later Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Picador reissues. Because only the first two Ballou printings carry the Van Veen jacket, a Van Veen jacket alone does not establish the first printing — the Minneapolis Star blurb test does.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Call It Sleep* by Henry Roth a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/call-it-sleep
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.