# Is "Cathay" by Ezra Pound a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Cathay by Ezra Pound (Elkin Mathews, London, 1915) is identified by: First edition: Elkin Mathews, London, published 6 April 1915 in an edition of 1,000 copies — Gallup A9, the standard citation, confirmed by independent ABAA/UK dealer catalogues. UK-only true first; there is no separate American edition of Cathay, and the census claim is confirmed on that point but needs one correction of sequence.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition: Elkin Mathews, London, published 6 April 1915 in an edition of 1,000 copies — Gallup A9, the standard citation, confirmed by independent ABAA/UK dealer catalogues
- A slim 32-page pamphlet, the sheets string-sewn into publisher's printed wrappers lettered in black; dealers describe the wrapper stock variously as drab, buff or brown, so the shade alone should not be treated as a state point
- There is no edition statement or number line to check: the Elkin Mathews imprint with the 1915 date on a 32-page wrappered pamphlet is the first and only printing of the book as a separate publication
- The full title is a point in itself — "Cathay
- Translations by Ezra Pound, for the most part from the Chinese of Rihaku, from the notes of the late Ernest Fenollosa, and the decipherings of the professors Mori and Ariga." Contents of the first: fourteen poems translated from the Chinese plus Pound's version of the Anglo-Saxon "The Seafarer." Condition, not state, is the collecting issue — the pamphlet is fragile and foxing and spine browning are near-universal
- Publisher imprint reads Elkin Mathews, London
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Ezra Pound |
| Publisher | Elkin Mathews, London |
| Year | 1915 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Poetry |
| Key point | First edition: Elkin Mathews, London, published 6 April 1915 in an edition of 1,000 copies — Gallup A9, the standard citation, confirmed by… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
First edition: Elkin Mathews, London, published 6 April 1915 in an edition of 1,000 copies — Gallup A9, the standard citation, confirmed by independent ABAA/UK dealer catalogues. A slim 32-page pamphlet, the sheets string-sewn into publisher's printed wrappers lettered in black; dealers describe the wrapper stock variously as drab, buff or brown, so the shade alone should not be treated as a state point. There is no edition statement or number line to check: the Elkin Mathews imprint with the 1915 date on a 32-page wrappered pamphlet is the first and only printing of the book as a separate publication. The full title is a point in itself — "Cathay. Translations by Ezra Pound, for the most part from the Chinese of Rihaku, from the notes of the late Ernest Fenollosa, and the decipherings of the professors Mori and Ariga." Contents of the first: fourteen poems translated from the Chinese plus Pound's version of the Anglo-Saxon "The Seafarer." Condition, not state, is the collecting issue — the pamphlet is fragile and foxing and spine browning are near-universal.

## Is this the true first?
UK-only true first; there is no separate American edition of Cathay, and the census claim is confirmed on that point but needs one correction of sequence. The Cathay poems were first reprinted not in the American Lustra but in the London Lustra (Elkin Mathews, 1916), where they appear without "The Seafarer" and with four additional Chinese poems; the New York Lustra of Ezra Pound (Alfred A. Knopf, 1917) followed. So the American collector's route to the Cathay poems is the Knopf Lustra (1917), but the London Lustra (1916) precedes it, and neither is an edition of Cathay — the only edition of Cathay proper is Elkin Mathews, London, 1915.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue. The reprint tells are the collected appearances rather than separate editions: the poems folded into Lustra (London 1916; New York, Knopf, 1917), then into Personae and the New Directions collected volumes. Modern separate reissues are clearly identifiable — the New Directions Cathay: The Centennial Edition (2015) and the Fordham Cathay: A Critical Edition (2019, ed. Billings, Bush, Saussy) are scholarly reprints carrying modern ISBNs and are the commonest items misdescribed as Cathay firsts. Any hardbound copy is not the original issue: the 1915 book was issued only in wrappers.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Cathay* by Ezra Pound a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/cathay
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.