# Is "Good-bye to All That" by Robert Graves a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Good-bye to All That by Robert Graves (Jonathan Cape, 1929) is identified by: Published 18 November 1929 by Jonathan Cape, London, the title styled on the title page as "GOOD-BYE TO ALL THAT" (hyphenated) above "An Autobiography" (Higginson & Williams A32). Jonathan Cape, London, 18 November 1929 is the true first and the edition collected; the census claim is confirmed.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Published 18 November 1929 by Jonathan Cape, London, the title styled on the title page as "GOOD-BYE TO ALL THAT" (hyphenated) above "An Autobiography" (Higginson & Williams A32)
- Collation [A]8 B-2E8, 224 leaves
- Bound in salmon (light red) cloth, spine stamped in gold "GOOD-BYE / TO / ALL THAT / [four diamonds] / ROBERT / GRAVES / JONATHAN CAPE", with the publisher's device blind-stamped on the rear board
- Photographic frontispiece portrait of Graves, with further black-and-white plates and maps including a double-page map, and a Dedicatory Epilogue to Laura Riding
- The jacket is a white photographic jacket printed in black, designed by Len Lye from a photograph by Alfred Cracknell; it is a priced jacket, with the price present at the spine/flap
- The defining point is textual and is a matter of STATE, not impression: the first state prints in full a short passage on p
- Publisher imprint reads Jonathan Cape

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Robert Graves |
| Publisher | Jonathan Cape |
| Year | 1929 |
| True first | American edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Published 18 November 1929 by Jonathan Cape, London, the title styled on the title page as "GOOD-BYE TO ALL THAT" (hyphenated) above "An… |
| Book-club edition exists? | Yes |

## Points of issue
Published 18 November 1929 by Jonathan Cape, London, the title styled on the title page as "GOOD-BYE TO ALL THAT" (hyphenated) above "An Autobiography" (Higginson & Williams A32). Collation [A]8 B-2E8, 224 leaves. Bound in salmon (light red) cloth, spine stamped in gold "GOOD-BYE / TO / ALL THAT / [four diamonds] / ROBERT / GRAVES / JONATHAN CAPE", with the publisher's device blind-stamped on the rear board. Photographic frontispiece portrait of Graves, with further black-and-white plates and maps including a double-page map, and a Dedicatory Epilogue to Laura Riding. The jacket is a white photographic jacket printed in black, designed by Len Lye from a photograph by Alfred Cracknell; it is a priced jacket, with the price present at the spine/flap. The defining point is textual and is a matter of STATE, not impression: the first state prints in full a short passage on p. 290 and the Siegfried Sassoon poem that Graves used without Sassoon's permission — the last four lines of p. 341 and the whole of pp. 342-343. Both were expurgated in subsequent states, the excisions marked typographically where the text was removed, so a copy is checked by reading pp. 290 and 341-343, never by the title page. Fewer than 100 copies of the unexpurgated first state are believed to survive.

## Is this the true first?
Jonathan Cape, London, 18 November 1929 is the true first and the edition collected; the census claim is confirmed. The first American edition is Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith, New York, published 13 January 1930 — nearly two months later — and it follows the expurgated text, so it cannot carry the first-state points at all and is not a substitute for the London issue. Note the title styling: the 1929 first is "Good-bye to All That", hyphenated, on its title page.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
The real trap is not a book club but the 1957 revision: Graves substantially rewrote the book for Cassell (London) and Doubleday (New York) in 1957, and that rewritten text — the one in print ever since — is a different book from the 1929 original, a "first thus" at best and routinely offered as though it were the first. Within 1929 the volume of printing is the hazard: 20,000 copies sold in the first week and 30,000 by December, and Cape ran multiple impressions in November and December 1929, all in the same salmon cloth and all resembling the first. Because fewer than 100 copies escaped in the first state while the opening week alone sold 20,000, the expurgation was carried out during the original print run — meaning a first-impression copy is not necessarily a first-state copy, and only the text at p. 290 and pp. 341-343 settles it.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Good-bye to All That* by Robert Graves a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/good-bye-to-all-that
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.