# Is "Enough Rope" by Dorothy Parker a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Enough Rope by Dorothy Parker (Boni & Liveright, New York, 1926) is identified by: First edition, first printing: Boni & Liveright, New York, 1926. American-only true first; the census claim is confirmed.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition, first printing: Boni & Liveright, New York, 1926
- The identification point is clean and decisive, because Boni & Liveright printed a cumulative printing history on the copyright page and added a line for each new printing
- The true first printing's copyright page reads "Copyright, 1926, by BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC. All Rights of Reproduction Reserved" followed by the single line "First printing, December, 1926" and nothing beneath it
- Every later printing carries that line plus its own and all intervening ones — "Second printing, January, 1927," "Third printing, February, 1927," and so on through at least "Thirteenth printing, July, 1928." Count the lines: one line only is the first; two or more lines is not
- Title page reads "ENOUGH ROPE / Poems by / DOROTHY PARKER / NEW YORK / BONI & LIVERIGHT / 1926." Dedication: "To Elinor Wylie." Binding is a slim octavo in quarter (half) black cloth, the spine lettered in gilt, over orange-and-black patterned/marbled paper-covered boards
- The dust jacket is grey paper, and the price should be present at the flap; dealers describe the jacket lettering inconsistently (yellow in some records, dark blue in others) and some of those descriptions attach to later-printing copies, so jacket ink colour should not be used as a first-printing test — the copyright-page line count is the test
- Publisher imprint reads Boni & Liveright, New York

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Dorothy Parker |
| Publisher | Boni & Liveright, New York |
| Year | 1926 |
| True first | American edition |
| Format | Poetry |
| Key point | First edition, first printing: Boni & Liveright, New York, 1926 |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
First edition, first printing: Boni & Liveright, New York, 1926. The identification point is clean and decisive, because Boni & Liveright printed a cumulative printing history on the copyright page and added a line for each new printing. The true first printing's copyright page reads "Copyright, 1926, by BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC. All Rights of Reproduction Reserved" followed by the single line "First printing, December, 1926" and nothing beneath it. Every later printing carries that line plus its own and all intervening ones — "Second printing, January, 1927," "Third printing, February, 1927," and so on through at least "Thirteenth printing, July, 1928." Count the lines: one line only is the first; two or more lines is not. Title page reads "ENOUGH ROPE / Poems by / DOROTHY PARKER / NEW YORK / BONI & LIVERIGHT / 1926." Dedication: "To Elinor Wylie." Binding is a slim octavo in quarter (half) black cloth, the spine lettered in gilt, over orange-and-black patterned/marbled paper-covered boards. The dust jacket is grey paper, and the price should be present at the flap; dealers describe the jacket lettering inconsistently (yellow in some records, dark blue in others) and some of those descriptions attach to later-printing copies, so jacket ink colour should not be used as a first-printing test — the copyright-page line count is the test.

## Is this the true first?
American-only true first; the census claim is confirmed. Boni & Liveright, New York, 1926 is the first edition of Parker's first book and her first and most collected verse volume, gathering verses previously printed in Life, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York World. No British edition holds or contests priority, and there is no original-language question — Parker wrote in English and published first in New York. There is accordingly no UK-vs-US precedence trap here; the only precedence question a cataloguer faces is printing, not edition.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue is documented. The dominant trap is printing, not club: Enough Rope was a genuine bestseller — thirteen printings inside about nineteen months, December 1926 to July 1928, and reported sales in the tens of thousands — so the overwhelming majority of copies dated 1926 or 1927 on the title page are later printings of the first edition, and dealers openly list sixth-printing and eleventh-printing copies. A title page dated 1926 proves nothing on its own; the copyright page decides. Later Boni & Liveright printings retain the 1926 title-page date. Modern reprints (Dover, Penguin Random House, Warbler Press) carry ISBNs and are unmistakable.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Enough Rope* by Dorothy Parker a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/enough-rope
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.