# Is "Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates" by Samuel Beckett a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates by Samuel Beckett (Europa Press, 1935) is identified by: First edition, published December 1935 in a total limitation of 327 copies whose four-part breakdown is the identification point: 25 copies on Normandy vellum signed by Beckett and numbered I–XXV; 250 copies on alfa paper numbered 1–250; 50 copies marked 'hors commerce'; and 2 vellum copies lettered A and B reserved for author and publisher. No territorial precedence question: this is a Paris-printed English-language original with no contemporaneous London or New York edition — Chatto and Windus, Beckett's London publisher, had turned the poems down.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition, published December 1935 in a total limitation of 327 copies whose four-part breakdown is the identification point: 25 copies on Normandy vellum signed by Beckett and numbered I–XXV; 250 copies on alfa paper numbered 1–250
- 50 copies marked 'hors commerce'; and 2 vellum copies lettered A and B reserved for author and publisher
- Small 4to, issued in brown/tan printed wrappers lettered in black
- Check the limitation leaf against the copy in hand: the signed issue is the Roman-numbered vellum, and an arabic number in the 1–250 range indicates the unsigned alfa issue regardless of any 'signed edition' framing in a description
- This was the third title in Reavey's Europa Poets series, after Reavey's own Nostradam and Signes d'adieu — dealer descriptions calling it 'the first book published by the Europa Press' are contradicted by the scholarly record of the series
- Publisher imprint reads Europa Press
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Samuel Beckett |
| Publisher | Europa Press |
| Year | 1935 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Poetry |
| Key point | First edition, published December 1935 in a total limitation of 327 copies whose four-part breakdown is the identification point: 25 copies… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
First edition, published December 1935 in a total limitation of 327 copies whose four-part breakdown is the identification point: 25 copies on Normandy vellum signed by Beckett and numbered I–XXV; 250 copies on alfa paper numbered 1–250; 50 copies marked 'hors commerce'; and 2 vellum copies lettered A and B reserved for author and publisher. Small 4to, issued in brown/tan printed wrappers lettered in black. Check the limitation leaf against the copy in hand: the signed issue is the Roman-numbered vellum, and an arabic number in the 1–250 range indicates the unsigned alfa issue regardless of any 'signed edition' framing in a description. This was the third title in Reavey's Europa Poets series, after Reavey's own Nostradam and Signes d'adieu — dealer descriptions calling it 'the first book published by the Europa Press' are contradicted by the scholarly record of the series.

## Is this the true first?
No territorial precedence question: this is a Paris-printed English-language original with no contemporaneous London or New York edition — Chatto and Windus, Beckett's London publisher, had turned the poems down. The serious trap here is a title collision. 'Echo's Bones', the suppressed 1933 short story written as a coda to More Pricks Than Kicks and rejected by Charles Prentice, is an entirely different work, first published only in 2014 by Faber and Faber (UK) and Grove Press (US), edited by Mark Nixon. A 2014 'Echo's Bones' has no relation to the 1935 poetry collection beyond the shared title.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club edition. Because the 327 copies were never trade-reprinted in this form, the risk is mis-description rather than reprinting: the 50 hors commerce copies and the 250 alfa copies are frequently offered with limitation wording that blurs them into the 25 signed vellum copies.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates* by Samuel Beckett a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/echos-bones-and-other-precipitates
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.