# Is "Lamy of Santa Fe: His Life and Times" by Paul Horgan a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Lamy of Santa Fe: His Life and Times by Paul Horgan (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975) is identified by: Farrar, Straus and Giroux's practice from 1965 onward is to state "First edition", "First printing" or "First published" with the year on the copyright page; for this book dealers describing firsts quote it as "First printing so stated", and a second printing of the 1975 hardcover exists that retains the 1975 date but drops the statement. US-only true first: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1975 (Pulitzer Prize for History, 1976); no contemporaneous UK edition traced in the sources consulted.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Farrar, Straus and Giroux's practice from 1965 onward is to state "First edition", "First printing" or "First published" with the year on the copyright page; for this book dealers describing firsts quote it as "First printing so stated", and a second printing of the 1975 hardcover exists that retains the 1975 date but drops the statement
- The trade issue collates xvi + 524 pages (final leaf blank; commonly cited as 523 pp.), with 16 plates of black-and-white photographs and an endpaper map printed in yellow and black
- Bound in black cloth, the spine lettered and decorated in gilt, the upper board decorated in blind, with the top edge stained purple, in a pictorial jacket with the price present at the front flap (jackets are often found price-clipped)
- ISBN 0-374-18300-7
- Publisher imprint reads Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Paul Horgan |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Year | 1975 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Farrar, Straus and Giroux's practice from 1965 onward is to state "First edition", "First printing" or "First published" with the year on… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Farrar, Straus and Giroux's practice from 1965 onward is to state "First edition", "First printing" or "First published" with the year on the copyright page; for this book dealers describing firsts quote it as "First printing so stated", and a second printing of the 1975 hardcover exists that retains the 1975 date but drops the statement. The trade issue collates xvi + 524 pages (final leaf blank; commonly cited as 523 pp.), with 16 plates of black-and-white photographs and an endpaper map printed in yellow and black. Bound in black cloth, the spine lettered and decorated in gilt, the upper board decorated in blind, with the top edge stained purple, in a pictorial jacket with the price present at the front flap (jackets are often found price-clipped). ISBN 0-374-18300-7.

## Is this the true first?
US-only true first: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1975 (Pulitzer Prize for History, 1976); no contemporaneous UK edition traced in the sources consulted. The census note misses a real precedence point that is corrected here: the 1975 first edition was issued in two forms, which is why dealers catalogue the black-cloth issue specifically as the "first trade edition". A signed, numbered large-paper limited issue was published alongside it, in a slipcase and without a jacket as issued. Name both: the signed large-paper limited issue and the black-cloth trade issue. The limitation figure is not settled in the sources consulted -- one dealer describes it as one of 500 large-paper copies while numbering a copy "#63 of 490" -- so the figure should be read off the limitation leaf of the copy in hand rather than assumed. "First thus" trap: the FSG/Noonday trade paperback (ISBN 0-374-51588-3).

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club printing is documented in the sources consulted. The routine confusions for this title are the later FSG/Noonday trade paperback and the second printing of the 1975 hardcover -- one dealer listing explicitly offers a "2nd printing", which keeps the 1975 date on the title page but lacks the first-printing statement. The copyright page must be read; the title-page date will not settle it.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Lamy of Santa Fe: His Life and Times* by Paul Horgan a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/lamy-of-santa-fe-his-life-and-times
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.