# Is "Cane" by Jean Toomer a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Cane by Jean Toomer (Boni & Liveright, New York, 1923) is identified by: First edition, first printing: Boni & Liveright, New York, 1923, with the 1923 date on the title page and NO printing or impression statement on the copyright page. The census claim is confirmed.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition, first printing: Boni & Liveright, New York, 1923, with the 1923 date on the title page and NO printing or impression statement on the copyright page
- THE DECISIVE TELL IS THE 1927 REISSUE: Cane was not reprinted until 1927, when Boni & Liveright issued a second printing that IS stated as such ("2nd printing"/second impression) on the copyright/publication page
- That 1927 impression is itself scarce and is the trap most often sold as a first — check the copyright page for a stated impression and check the title-page date
- 239 pp.; foreword by Waldo Frank; deckle edges
- BINDING DESCRIPTIONS CONFLICT and no priority is established: ABAA dealers describe the publisher's cloth variously as buff cloth stamped in yellow and black and as grey cloth stamped in marigold and dark blue
- These may well be the same cloth catalogued under different light or differing degrees of fading; treat neither description as a state point
- Publisher imprint reads Boni & Liveright, New York

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Jean Toomer |
| Publisher | Boni & Liveright, New York |
| Year | 1923 |
| True first | British edition |
| Format | Poetry |
| Key point | First edition, first printing: Boni & Liveright, New York, 1923, with the 1923 date on the title page and NO printing or impression… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
First edition, first printing: Boni & Liveright, New York, 1923, with the 1923 date on the title page and NO printing or impression statement on the copyright page. THE DECISIVE TELL IS THE 1927 REISSUE: Cane was not reprinted until 1927, when Boni & Liveright issued a second printing that IS stated as such ("2nd printing"/second impression) on the copyright/publication page. That 1927 impression is itself scarce and is the trap most often sold as a first — check the copyright page for a stated impression and check the title-page date. 239 pp.; foreword by Waldo Frank; deckle edges. BINDING DESCRIPTIONS CONFLICT and no priority is established: ABAA dealers describe the publisher's cloth variously as buff cloth stamped in yellow and black and as grey cloth stamped in marigold and dark blue. These may well be the same cloth catalogued under different light or differing degrees of fading; treat neither description as a state point. The dust jacket is very rare and is lacking from nearly every surviving copy. PRINT-RUN CAUTION: the "first printing of 500 copies" figure repeated by dealers and popular sources traces to the number of copies SOLD in the standard scholarly account, not a documented press figure. It is not an identification point and must not be used to authenticate a copy.

## Is this the true first?
The census claim is confirmed. Boni & Liveright, New York, 1923 is the true and only first edition; no contemporaneous, earlier, or simultaneous British edition is recorded, and there is no original-language question. Modern reissues are "first thus" only and carry no precedence — notably the Liveright/Norton editions, including the 2011 Liveright edition edited by Rudolph P. Byrd and Henry Louis Gates Jr. The 1923 Boni & Liveright is the only edition collected as a first.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue of the 1923 edition is documented in any source consulted — the title famously failed commercially and went out of print until its 1960s rediscovery, so there was no club market for it. The functional equivalent of the book-club trap on this title is the stated 1927 Boni & Liveright second printing, which shares the publisher and the general appearance of the first and is distinguished only by the title-page date and the stated impression on the copyright page.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Cane* by Jean Toomer a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/cane
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.