# Is "Can Such Things Be?" by Ambrose Bierce a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Can Such Things Be? by Ambrose Bierce (The Cassell Publishing Company, New York, 1893) is identified by: First edition: New York, The Cassell Publishing Company, 1893. The census claim is confirmed: the American Cassell edition of 1893 is the true first and the reference text; no British or foreign-language edition precedes it, and no early UK first is separately collected against it.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition: New York, The Cassell Publishing Company, 1893
- Octavo, collating pp. [i-ii] iii-iv [1] 2-320 (iv + 320), with flyleaves front and rear; twenty-four tales, including 'The Death of Halpin Frayser,' 'The Moonlit Road' and 'Moxon's Master.' There is no edition or printing statement and no number line; identification rests on the 1893 Cassell Publishing Company title-page imprint and the 320-page collation
- Binding is NOT a single safe point: two markedly different bindings are recorded by top-tier sources — Currey describes original decorated mustard cloth, front panel stamped in brown and black, spine panel stamped in black and gold, rear panel stamped in blind
- Sotheby's cataloguing describes original blue cloth, upper cover lettered and pictorially stamped in black and red, lower cover with rules and Greek key in blind, spine lettered in gilt with a floral motif in gilt and black
- No priority between these bindings has been established in the sources consulted, so do not reject a copy on cloth color alone
- Publisher imprint reads The Cassell Publishing Company, New York
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Ambrose Bierce |
| Publisher | The Cassell Publishing Company, New York |
| Year | 1893 |
| True first | American edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | First edition: New York, The Cassell Publishing Company, 1893 |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
First edition: New York, The Cassell Publishing Company, 1893. Octavo, collating pp. [i-ii] iii-iv [1] 2-320 (iv + 320), with flyleaves front and rear; twenty-four tales, including 'The Death of Halpin Frayser,' 'The Moonlit Road' and 'Moxon's Master.' There is no edition or printing statement and no number line; identification rests on the 1893 Cassell Publishing Company title-page imprint and the 320-page collation. Binding is NOT a single safe point: two markedly different bindings are recorded by top-tier sources — Currey describes original decorated mustard cloth, front panel stamped in brown and black, spine panel stamped in black and gold, rear panel stamped in blind; Sotheby's cataloguing describes original blue cloth, upper cover lettered and pictorially stamped in black and red, lower cover with rules and Greek key in blind, spine lettered in gilt with a floral motif in gilt and black. No priority between these bindings has been established in the sources consulted, so do not reject a copy on cloth color alone.

## Is this the true first?
The census claim is confirmed: the American Cassell edition of 1893 is the true first and the reference text; no British or foreign-language edition precedes it, and no early UK first is separately collected against it. The 1903 Neale Publishing 'new and authorized edition' is a substantially different book — Bierce's author's note complains that tales had been reprinted without his assent, and the 1903 contents overlap the 1893 collection only in a handful of the famous stories; it is a revised edition, not a first. The 1909-1912 Neale Collected Works scatters and rearranges the contents across volumes, which is why the 1893 Cassell state remains the reference.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No contemporary book-club issue is documented. The traps are the 1903 Neale Publishing revised edition (Washington/New York imprint, different contents), the Neale Collected Works volumes of 1909-1912, and the 1918 Boni & Liveright and 1926 A. & C. Boni reprints, all of which are commonly listed simply as 'Can Such Things Be?' with an early-looking date. Any copy whose title page does not read 'The Cassell Publishing Co.' with the date 1893 is a later edition.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Can Such Things Be?* by Ambrose Bierce a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/can-such-things-be
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.