# Is "Grandfather's Chair: A History for Youth" by Nathaniel Hawthorne a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Grandfather's Chair: A History for Youth by Nathaniel Hawthorne (E. P. Peabody, 1841) is identified by: First of the three original 1841 volumes making up Hawthorne's 'Grandfather's Chair' series (the other two, Famous Old People and Liberty Tree, were issued as separate books the same year before all three were later collected as The Whole History of Grandfather's Chair).

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First of the three original 1841 volumes making up Hawthorne's 'Grandfather's Chair' series (the other two, Famous Old People and Liberty Tree, were issued as separate books the same year before all three were later collected as The Whole History of Grandfather's Chair)
- Published in Boston by E. P. Peabody -- Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, sister of Hawthorne's future wife Sophia, operating from her bookshop at 13 West Street -- jointly with Wiley & Putnam of New York, in 1841, after the originally contracted publisher, Nahum Capen, withdrew; the preface is dated Boston, November 1840
- Collation viii, [9]-140 pp., 16mo, bound in publisher's basket-weave grained plum cloth with a gilt-decorated black paper spine label on the upper cover, a label frequently missing or worn on surviving copies
- Publisher imprint reads E. P. Peabody
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Nathaniel Hawthorne |
| Publisher | E. P. Peabody |
| Year | 1841 |
| True first | — |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | First of the three original 1841 volumes making up Hawthorne's 'Grandfather's Chair' series (the other two, Famous Old People and Liberty… |
| Book-club edition exists? | — |

## Points of issue
First of the three original 1841 volumes making up Hawthorne's 'Grandfather's Chair' series (the other two, Famous Old People and Liberty Tree, were issued as separate books the same year before all three were later collected as The Whole History of Grandfather's Chair). Published in Boston by E. P. Peabody -- Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, sister of Hawthorne's future wife Sophia, operating from her bookshop at 13 West Street -- jointly with Wiley & Putnam of New York, in 1841, after the originally contracted publisher, Nahum Capen, withdrew; the preface is dated Boston, November 1840. Collation viii, [9]-140 pp., 16mo, bound in publisher's basket-weave grained plum cloth with a gilt-decorated black paper spine label on the upper cover, a label frequently missing or worn on surviving copies.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
Later 19th-century reprints of the combined Whole History of Grandfather's Chair (issued by Ticknor, Fields and successors) are bound uniformly with Hawthorne's other juvenile works in standard cloth series bindings, not the original plum basket-weave cloth of the separate 1841 first parts.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Grandfather's Chair: A History for Youth* by Nathaniel Hawthorne a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/grandfathers-chair-a-history-for-youth
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.