# Is "Color" by Countee Cullen a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Color by Countee Cullen (Harper & Brothers, New York and London, 1925) is identified by: First edition, first printing is identified on the copyright page by BOTH the "First Edition" statement and the Harper & Brothers date code "H-Z". The census claim is essentially correct, with one refinement: the title page imprint reads "New York and London," which regularly misleads cataloguers into positing a separate British first.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition, first printing is identified on the copyright page by BOTH the "First Edition" statement and the Harper & Brothers date code "H-Z"
- Harper's code (used on the copyright page from 1912 to 1968) is two letters: the first is the month of printing (A=January, B=February, C=March, D=April, E=May, F=June, G=July, H=August, I=September, K=October, L=November, M=December — the letter J is skipped), the second is the year, with Z = 1925
- So H-Z = August 1925
- Because the code records the date of that particular printing, any later Harper impression carries a different letter pair — the code is therefore the decisive tell and cannot be faked by a matching title-page date
- Octavo, 108 pp., 73 poems including "Yet Do I Marvel," "Heritage," and "Incident." Publisher's binding: quarter/half yellow cloth over patterned paper-covered boards, with printed paper labels affixed to the spine and to the front board, black lettering to the label; deckle edges
- The dust jacket is present on very few surviving copies and is rarely found; the vast majority of firsts on the market are jacketless, so jacket absence is not evidence against a first
- Publisher imprint reads Harper & Brothers, New York and London

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Countee Cullen |
| Publisher | Harper & Brothers, New York and London |
| Year | 1925 |
| True first | British edition |
| Format | Poetry |
| Key point | First edition, first printing is identified on the copyright page by BOTH the "First Edition" statement and the Harper & Brothers date code… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
First edition, first printing is identified on the copyright page by BOTH the "First Edition" statement and the Harper & Brothers date code "H-Z". Harper's code (used on the copyright page from 1912 to 1968) is two letters: the first is the month of printing (A=January, B=February, C=March, D=April, E=May, F=June, G=July, H=August, I=September, K=October, L=November, M=December — the letter J is skipped), the second is the year, with Z = 1925. So H-Z = August 1925. Because the code records the date of that particular printing, any later Harper impression carries a different letter pair — the code is therefore the decisive tell and cannot be faked by a matching title-page date. Octavo, 108 pp., 73 poems including "Yet Do I Marvel," "Heritage," and "Incident." Publisher's binding: quarter/half yellow cloth over patterned paper-covered boards, with printed paper labels affixed to the spine and to the front board, black lettering to the label; deckle edges. The dust jacket is present on very few surviving copies and is rarely found; the vast majority of firsts on the market are jacketless, so jacket absence is not evidence against a first.

## Is this the true first?
The census claim is essentially correct, with one refinement: the title page imprint reads "New York and London," which regularly misleads cataloguers into positing a separate British first. It is a joint Harper imprint on an American production — Harper & Brothers, 1925, is the true and only first edition, and no separate British first edition of Color is recorded. There is no original-language precedence question.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue of the 1925 Harper edition is documented in any source consulted. Later Harper printings are identified by a different month-year code letter pair on the copyright page (and the "First Edition" statement should be absent); still later reprints appear under the Harper & Row imprint and under other publishers, all of which are later editions rather than club copies.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Color* by Countee Cullen a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/color
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.