# Is "Coming of Age in Samoa" by Margaret Mead a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead (William Morrow & Company, 1928) is identified by: William Morrow & Company, New York, 1928 (August 1928; LCCN 28-20670). US precedes.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- William Morrow & Company, New York, 1928 (August 1928
- LCCN 28-20670)
- The title page is dated in roman numerals, MCMXXVIII, and the copyright page reads copyright 1928 by William Morrow & Company with no mention of any later printing — that absence is the test
- Octavo, 297 pp., with a foreword by Franz Boas and a black-and-white photographic frontispiece and plates (dealers count roughly seven plates / twelve photographs)
- The binding is blue cloth boards with silver palm trees stamped on the front cover and silver lettering to the spine
- The first-issue jacket carries an illustration of a young Samoan couple, shows the subtitle beneath the title, and is free of review blurbs or quotations; later jackets add press quotations
- Publisher imprint reads William Morrow & Company

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Margaret Mead |
| Publisher | William Morrow & Company |
| Year | 1928 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | William Morrow & Company, New York, 1928 (August 1928 |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
William Morrow & Company, New York, 1928 (August 1928; LCCN 28-20670). The title page is dated in roman numerals, MCMXXVIII, and the copyright page reads copyright 1928 by William Morrow & Company with no mention of any later printing — that absence is the test. Octavo, 297 pp., with a foreword by Franz Boas and a black-and-white photographic frontispiece and plates (dealers count roughly seven plates / twelve photographs). The binding is blue cloth boards with silver palm trees stamped on the front cover and silver lettering to the spine. The first-issue jacket carries an illustration of a young Samoan couple, shows the subtitle beneath the title, and is free of review blurbs or quotations; later jackets add press quotations. One supporting clue, to be used cautiously: library cataloguing of the 1928 Morrow sheets transcribes the subtitle with the British spelling, 'A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation', while later American issues normalise it to 'Civilization' — sources are not fully consistent on this, so treat it as corroborative rather than decisive.

## Is this the true first?
US precedes. William Morrow & Company, New York, 1928 is the true first. The first British edition is Jonathan Cape, London, 1929, collected as the first UK appearance but not the true first. Correction to the census note: this title was NOT on William Morrow's 'very first list' — Morrow founded the firm in 1926 and its first book was Honoré Morrow's On to Oregon!; Coming of Age in Samoa appeared two years into the imprint and became its early landmark, which is a different claim.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club edition of the 1928 Morrow issue is documented, but the cheap-reprint traps are heavy and are routinely mistaken for the first because they retain a 1928 copyright line. Blue Ribbon Books, New York, reprinted it from about 1932 (also 1936); the Modern Library issued it in 1953; there are American Museum of Natural History members' issues and an International Collectors Library edition; and the Mentor/Signet and Dell/Laurel paperbacks follow. Any copy naming Blue Ribbon Books, Modern Library, Mentor, New American Library or Peter Smith on the title page or spine is a reprint.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Coming of Age in Samoa* by Margaret Mead a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/coming-of-age-in-samoa
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.