# Is "His Last Bow" by Arthur Conan Doyle a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of His Last Bow by Arthur Conan Doyle (John Murray, 1917) is identified by: The Murray issue (Green & Gibson A40a) is an octavo bound in publisher's bright red cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt on the upper board and spine, with 6 pages of publisher's advertisements at the end. Both editions are collected and the census claim that the UK precedes the US is NOT established.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The Murray issue (Green & Gibson A40a) is an octavo bound in publisher's bright red cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt on the upper board and spine, with 6 pages of publisher's advertisements at the end
- The gilt spine lettering on this issue is notoriously prone to oxidising/darkening because of wartime-economy materials, so a copy with bright, unoxidised lettering is unusual rather than suspect
- The subtitle on the Murray title page reads 'Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes'; the Doran issue (Green & Gibson A40c) is bound in light orange cloth and its title page carries the variant subtitle 'A Reminiscence of Sherlock Holmes', so the subtitle wording alone separates the two editions
- Later Murray printings drop the terminal advertisement leaves and are dated later on the title page
- Publisher imprint reads John Murray
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Arthur Conan Doyle |
| Publisher | John Murray |
| Year | 1917 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | The Murray issue (Green & Gibson A40a) is an octavo bound in publisher's bright red cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt on the upper board… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
The Murray issue (Green & Gibson A40a) is an octavo bound in publisher's bright red cloth, blocked and lettered in gilt on the upper board and spine, with 6 pages of publisher's advertisements at the end. The gilt spine lettering on this issue is notoriously prone to oxidising/darkening because of wartime-economy materials, so a copy with bright, unoxidised lettering is unusual rather than suspect. The subtitle on the Murray title page reads 'Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes'; the Doran issue (Green & Gibson A40c) is bound in light orange cloth and its title page carries the variant subtitle 'A Reminiscence of Sherlock Holmes', so the subtitle wording alone separates the two editions. Later Murray printings drop the terminal advertisement leaves and are dated later on the title page.

## Is this the true first?
Both editions are collected and the census claim that the UK precedes the US is NOT established. The first English edition is John Murray, London, 22 October 1917; the first American is George H. Doran Company, New York, October 1917. Auction and ABAA dealer cataloguing consistently describe the two as same-month/effectively simultaneous, and at least one ABAA house flags the Doran as possibly preceding the Murray. Treat priority within October 1917 as unsettled and collect the Murray as the first English edition and the Doran as the first American edition rather than asserting either as the outright true first.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue is documented for the 1917 printings. Later Murray reprints retain the red cloth but are identifiable by the later title-page date and the absence of the terminal advertisements; the long-running Murray reprint series and later collected-edition volumes are the common reprint traps.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *His Last Bow* by Arthur Conan Doyle a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/his-last-bow
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.