# Is "History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark" by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (prepared for publication by Paul Allen, from Nicholas Biddle's narrative) a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (prepared for publication by Paul Allen, from Nicholas Biddle's narrative) (Bradford and Inskeep, 1814) is identified by: Philadelphia: Bradford and Inskeep, 1814, two octavo volumes, illustrated with a large folding map of the West copied by Samuel Lewis from William Clark's manuscript drawing and engraved by Samuel Harrison. The Philadelphia printing is the first published edition of the expedition narrative; the first London edition (Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1815) is a reprint of the American text, not a rival or earlier edition.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Philadelphia: Bradford and Inskeep, 1814, two octavo volumes, illustrated with a large folding map of the West copied by Samuel Lewis from William Clark's manuscript drawing and engraved by Samuel Harrison
- The map was an added-cost extra not included with every set at the time of publication, and because complete examples are so prized it has frequently been removed from volumes since, so a large share of surviving copies lack it or have it supplied in facsimile
- Nicholas Biddle wrote the narrative from Lewis's and Clark's field journals but gave up the work in 1811 after his election to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, handing the project to Paul Allen, whose name alone appears on the title page as having "prepared [it] for the press." Two settings both dated 1814 exist: the first printing runs 36 lines to the page, while a same-year reissue was reset in larger, clearer type at 32 lines to the page -- this reset issue is a second printing, not the first, though Coues later judged it the best-printed of the Biddle-Allen texts
- Collate specifically for the presence of the large folding map
- Publisher imprint reads Bradford and Inskeep
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (prepared for publication by Paul Allen, from Nicholas Biddle's narrative) |
| Publisher | Bradford and Inskeep |
| Year | 1814 |
| True first | American edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Philadelphia: Bradford and Inskeep, 1814, two octavo volumes, illustrated with a large folding map of the West copied by Samuel Lewis from… |
| Book-club edition exists? | — |

## Points of issue
Philadelphia: Bradford and Inskeep, 1814, two octavo volumes, illustrated with a large folding map of the West copied by Samuel Lewis from William Clark's manuscript drawing and engraved by Samuel Harrison. The map was an added-cost extra not included with every set at the time of publication, and because complete examples are so prized it has frequently been removed from volumes since, so a large share of surviving copies lack it or have it supplied in facsimile. Nicholas Biddle wrote the narrative from Lewis's and Clark's field journals but gave up the work in 1811 after his election to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, handing the project to Paul Allen, whose name alone appears on the title page as having "prepared [it] for the press." Two settings both dated 1814 exist: the first printing runs 36 lines to the page, while a same-year reissue was reset in larger, clearer type at 32 lines to the page -- this reset issue is a second printing, not the first, though Coues later judged it the best-printed of the Biddle-Allen texts. Collate specifically for the presence of the large folding map.

## Is this the true first?
The Philadelphia printing is the first published edition of the expedition narrative; the first London edition (Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1815) is a reprint of the American text, not a rival or earlier edition.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
The far more commonly encountered Elliott Coues 4-volume edition (Francis P. Harper, 1893) reprints and heavily annotates the Biddle-Allen 1814 text itself, so it is not a first-edition printing but is textually derived from it; Reuben Gold Thwaites's 8-volume "Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition" (1904-05) instead returns to Lewis's and Clark's raw manuscript journals rather than Biddle's literary paraphrase, making it a different work altogether. Neither should be mistaken for the 1814 Bradford and Inskeep first edition.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark* by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (prepared for publication by Paul Allen, from Nicholas Biddle's narrative) a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/history-of-the-expedition-under-the-command-of-captains-lewi
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.