# Is "Lassie Come-Home" by Eric Knight a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Lassie Come-Home by Eric Knight (The John C. Winston Company, 1940) is identified by: First printings state "Copyright, 1940" on the copyright page with no indication of any further printing; Winston stated later printings explicitly, and dealers routinely catalogue copies as "First Edition; Twenty-First Printing" (1945) and similar, so any stated printing number rules out the first. The census reversal is confirmed: although Knight was English-born, the novel appeared first in the United States — The John C.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First printings state "Copyright, 1940" on the copyright page with no indication of any further printing
- Winston stated later printings explicitly, and dealers routinely catalogue copies as "First Edition
- Twenty-First Printing"
- and similar, so any stated printing number rules out the first
- The binding is bright yellow/gold pictorial cloth with Lassie's head on the front cover and black lettering to the spine, with a publisher-applied pale orange top stain and cartographic endpapers tracing Lassie's route home
- Illustrations are by Marguerite Kirmse: a color frontispiece on glossy paper plus six black-and-white plates and numerous in-text drawings; collation is approximately 248 pages, octavo
- Publisher imprint reads The John C. Winston Company

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Eric Knight |
| Publisher | The John C. Winston Company |
| Year | 1940 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Children's / illustrated |
| Key point | First printings state "Copyright, 1940" on the copyright page with no indication of any further printing |
| Book-club edition exists? | Yes |

## Points of issue
First printings state "Copyright, 1940" on the copyright page with no indication of any further printing; Winston stated later printings explicitly, and dealers routinely catalogue copies as "First Edition; Twenty-First Printing" (1945) and similar, so any stated printing number rules out the first. The binding is bright yellow/gold pictorial cloth with Lassie's head on the front cover and black lettering to the spine, with a publisher-applied pale orange top stain and cartographic endpapers tracing Lassie's route home. Illustrations are by Marguerite Kirmse: a color frontispiece on glossy paper plus six black-and-white plates and numerous in-text drawings; collation is approximately 248 pages, octavo. The jacket carries the Kirmse design used on the first US edition and should be unclipped with the price present at the flap. Note a catalogue discrepancy: some dealers give the imprint city as Philadelphia and others as Chicago, reflecting Winston's multi-city (Philadelphia / Chicago / Toronto) imprint.

## Is this the true first?
The census reversal is confirmed: although Knight was English-born, the novel appeared first in the United States — The John C. Winston Company, 1940, illustrated by Marguerite Kirmse. The first UK edition is Cassell & Company, London, 1941 (brown cloth, priced jacket, with the Kirmse frontispiece and map endpapers) and is collected as the first British edition only. Precedence for the story itself runs earlier still: "Lassie Come-Home" first appeared as a short story in The Saturday Evening Post, 17 December 1938, which Knight later expanded into the 1940 novel — the magazine appearance is the first appearance in print, the Winston 1940 the first in book form. Cited in Carpenter & Prichard 304.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
A People's Book Club (Chicago) issue carrying the 1940 copyright is recorded and is a club reprint, not the first. Grosset & Dunlap reprints of the text exist and are self-identifying by imprint. Winston's own later printings state the printing number on the copyright page; a stated "Copyright, 1940" with nothing further is the first-printing condition.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Lassie Come-Home* by Eric Knight a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/lassie-come-home
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.