# Is "History of Plymouth Plantation" by William Bradford a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of History of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford (Massachusetts Historical Society, 1856) is identified by: The true first printing of the text is in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 4th series, volume III, Boston, 1856, edited with notes by Charles Deane and described as 'Now first printed from the original manuscript.' The separately-issued volume — Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1856; xix, 476 pp; 25 cm — is a reissue of the greater part of that Collections volume, and its own title page states the fact: 'Reprinted from the Massachusetts Historical Collections. The census attribution — 'Little, Brown (for the Massachusetts Historical Society)' as the true first — is imprecise and is corrected here.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The true first printing of the text is in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 4th series, volume III, Boston, 1856, edited with notes by Charles Deane and described as 'Now first printed from the original manuscript.' The separately-issued volume — Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1856; xix, 476 pp
- 25 cm — is a reissue of the greater part of that Collections volume, and its own title page states the fact: 'Reprinted from the Massachusetts Historical Collections
- Edited, with notes, by Charles Deane.' That title-page wording is the identification point separating the separate issue from the Collections appearance
- Whether the separate issue was printed from the same setting of type as the Collections sheets is not established in the sources consulted and is not asserted here
- No first-state text errors, binding variants or issue points beyond the title-page statement are documented
- Publisher imprint reads Massachusetts Historical Society
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | William Bradford |
| Publisher | Massachusetts Historical Society |
| Year | 1856 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | The true first printing of the text is in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 4th series, volume III, Boston, 1856, edited… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
The true first printing of the text is in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 4th series, volume III, Boston, 1856, edited with notes by Charles Deane and described as 'Now first printed from the original manuscript.' The separately-issued volume — Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1856; xix, 476 pp; 25 cm — is a reissue of the greater part of that Collections volume, and its own title page states the fact: 'Reprinted from the Massachusetts Historical Collections. Edited, with notes, by Charles Deane.' That title-page wording is the identification point separating the separate issue from the Collections appearance. Whether the separate issue was printed from the same setting of type as the Collections sheets is not established in the sources consulted and is not asserted here. No first-state text errors, binding variants or issue points beyond the title-page statement are documented.

## Is this the true first?
The census attribution — 'Little, Brown (for the Massachusetts Historical Society)' as the true first — is imprecise and is corrected here. Precedence runs to the Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 4th series, vol. III (Boston, 1856); the Little, Brown volume of the same year is the separate reissue, and says so on its title page. Both are 1856 and both are collected, but a copy sold as 'the true first' should be the Collections appearance. There is no UK, foreign-language or earlier edition to weigh: the work is in English and had never been printed. The manuscript, written 1630-51, disappeared from Boston around the British evacuation in 1776 and was identified in 1855 in the Bishop of London's library at Fulham Palace after a citation to the 'Fulham MS History' in Samuel Wilberforce's 1844 history was noticed in a Boston bookshop; Deane edited not from the manuscript, which was not returned, but from a copy secured from London. Sources consulted differ on whether that copy was a manuscript transcript or a photographic facsimile, so the point is left open.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue applies to an 1856 Boston imprint. The reprint field is crowded and modern: the 'Original Narratives of Early American History' series issue, Classic Reprint and Forgotten Books facsimiles, and Project Gutenberg-derived texts are all late reissues carrying no precedence. Within 1856 itself, the operative distinction is the Collections appearance versus the Little, Brown separate, identified by the latter's 'Reprinted from the Massachusetts Historical Collections' title-page statement.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *History of Plymouth Plantation* by William Bradford a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/history-of-plymouth-plantation
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.