# Is "If This Is a Man (US: Survival in Auschwitz; Se questo è un uomo)" by Primo Levi a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of If This Is a Man (US: Survival in Auschwitz; Se questo è un uomo) by Primo Levi (Francesco De Silva, 1947) is identified by: Turin: Francesco De Silva, published 11 October 1947 in 2,500 copies, under Franco Antonicelli as publisher and series director (Antonicelli chose the final title). Italian-original precedence; the census claim of De Silva (Turin), 1947, 2,500 copies, is correct on every count.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Turin: Francesco De Silva, published 11 October 1947 in 2,500 copies, under Franco Antonicelli as publisher and series director (Antonicelli chose the final title)
- Issued in the series "Biblioteca Leone Ginzburg" — documenti e studi di storia contemporanea — as number 3; the series line is a primary identification point
- 198 pp., in publisher's wrappers with a typographic device and titles printed in red to the front cover and spine
- The pictorial dust jacket reproduces a graphically retouched Goya (Álbum C, plate 49, originally titled "La misma") and prints Levi's epigraph-poem with the opening verse "Considerate se questo è un uomo" picked out in red; the jacket is usually absent and its presence is a significant point
- There is no printing statement and no number line — the De Silva imprint, the 1947 date, the Biblioteca Leone Ginzburg series line and the Goya jacket carry the identification
- Roughly 1,500 copies sold; the unsold remainder passed to La Nuova Italia when De Silva ceded operations in 1949 and was destroyed in the Florence flood of 4 November 1966, which is why survivors are few — the Centro Internazionale di Studi Primo Levi has run a public census appealing for surviving 1947 copies
- Publisher imprint reads Francesco De Silva

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Primo Levi |
| Publisher | Francesco De Silva |
| Year | 1947 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Turin: Francesco De Silva, published 11 October 1947 in 2,500 copies, under Franco Antonicelli as publisher and series director… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Turin: Francesco De Silva, published 11 October 1947 in 2,500 copies, under Franco Antonicelli as publisher and series director (Antonicelli chose the final title). Issued in the series "Biblioteca Leone Ginzburg" — documenti e studi di storia contemporanea — as number 3; the series line is a primary identification point. 198 pp., in publisher's wrappers with a typographic device and titles printed in red to the front cover and spine. The pictorial dust jacket reproduces a graphically retouched Goya (Álbum C, plate 49, originally titled "La misma") and prints Levi's epigraph-poem with the opening verse "Considerate se questo è un uomo" picked out in red; the jacket is usually absent and its presence is a significant point. There is no printing statement and no number line — the De Silva imprint, the 1947 date, the Biblioteca Leone Ginzburg series line and the Goya jacket carry the identification. Roughly 1,500 copies sold; the unsold remainder passed to La Nuova Italia when De Silva ceded operations in 1949 and was destroyed in the Florence flood of 4 November 1966, which is why survivors are few — the Centro Internazionale di Studi Primo Levi has run a public census appealing for surviving 1947 copies.

## Is this the true first?
Italian-original precedence; the census claim of De Silva (Turin), 1947, 2,500 copies, is correct on every count. The principal trap is the far commoner Turin: Einaudi, 1958 edition (in the "Saggi" series, first printing of 2,000 copies followed by a second of the same size). Einaudi had rejected the book in 1947; Levi signed with them in 1955 and the text was enriched with new episodes before the 1958 publication. The 1958 Einaudi is therefore a revised and expanded text — an important book in its own right, and the text from which the work's worldwide circulation descends — but it is a "first thus," not the first edition. First English: New York, The Orion Press, 1959, "If This Is a Man," translated by Stuart Woolf — first edition, first printing, 8vo, [vi], 206, [ii] pp., original blue cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in an illustrated wraparound dust jacket designed by Wladislaw Finne. The US title "Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity" first appears on the Collier Books paperback of 1961 and on later American issues — a copy titled Survival in Auschwitz is never the first English edition. British issues under The Bodley Head imprint are later than the 1959 Orion Press, though I did not pin their date against two independent authorities and no Bodley Head date is asserted here.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue is documented for the 1947 De Silva in the sources consulted. The 1961 Collier Books paperback is a mass-market retitling of the same Woolf translation, not a new text, and is a reprint. Later Einaudi issues — Saggi, Super ET, ET Scrittori, the school editions and the omnibus pairing with La tregua — are all reprints or "first thus" repackagings of the 1958 revised text and carry modern ISBNs. The single most common misattribution is treating any Einaudi copy, including 1958, as the first edition; only the 1947 De Silva Biblioteca Leone Ginzburg volume is.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *If This Is a Man (US: Survival in Auschwitz; Se questo è un uomo)* by Primo Levi a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/if-this-is-a-man-us-survival-in-auschwitz-se-questo-un-uomo
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.