# Is "Le Guide Culinaire" by Auguste Escoffier a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Le Guide Culinaire by Auguste Escoffier (Paris: au bureau de "L'Art culinaire", 1903) is identified by: CENSUS CLAIM CORRECTED. The French 1903 original has precedence and is the true first.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- CENSUS CLAIM CORRECTED. The 1903 first is not "printed for the author" and Émile Colin is not the publisher: the BnF Catalogue général record (FRBNF30405448) gives the imprint as Paris, au bureau de "L'Art culinaire" (Place Saint-Michel), 1903, in the series "Bibliothèque professionnelle," printed by the Imprimerie de Lagny — the Émile Colin / Lagny name that circulates online is the printer, not the publisher
- Points of the first printing: title page dated 1903 with the L'Art culinaire office imprint and the full collaborator list (Philéas Gilbert, E. Fétu, A. Suzanne, B. Reboul, Ch
- Dietrich, A. Caillat), drawings by Victor Morin; collation X + 792 pp., illustrated, roughly 23 cm, with terminal leaves of "renseignements" and a folding plate of the garde-manger
- Dealer records describe copies in publisher's red half-percaline with corners, spine lettered and ruled in gilt; a bookseller's imprint of Dupont et Malgat (1 rue Coquillière, Paris) is recorded on some copies
- No number line or edition statement exists — the 1903 date and the 792-page collation are the discriminators
- Page counts of 822, 824 and 943 circulate online and are wrong for the first: 824 is the digitised image count of the BnF scan
- Publisher imprint reads Paris: au bureau de "L'Art culinaire"

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Auguste Escoffier |
| Publisher | Paris: au bureau de "L'Art culinaire" |
| Year | 1903 |
| True first | — |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | CENSUS CLAIM CORRECTED. The 1903 first is not "printed for the author" and Émile Colin is not the publisher: the BnF Catalogue général… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
CENSUS CLAIM CORRECTED. The 1903 first is not "printed for the author" and Émile Colin is not the publisher: the BnF Catalogue général record (FRBNF30405448) gives the imprint as Paris, au bureau de "L'Art culinaire" (Place Saint-Michel), 1903, in the series "Bibliothèque professionnelle," printed by the Imprimerie de Lagny — the Émile Colin / Lagny name that circulates online is the printer, not the publisher. Points of the first printing: title page dated 1903 with the L'Art culinaire office imprint and the full collaborator list (Philéas Gilbert, E. Fétu, A. Suzanne, B. Reboul, Ch. Dietrich, A. Caillat), drawings by Victor Morin; collation X + 792 pp., illustrated, roughly 23 cm, with terminal leaves of "renseignements" and a folding plate of the garde-manger. Dealer records describe copies in publisher's red half-percaline with corners, spine lettered and ruled in gilt; a bookseller's imprint of Dupont et Malgat (1 rue Coquillière, Paris) is recorded on some copies. No number line or edition statement exists — the 1903 date and the 792-page collation are the discriminators. Page counts of 822, 824 and 943 circulate online and are wrong for the first: 824 is the digitised image count of the BnF scan; 943 is a later edition.

## Is this the true first?
The French 1903 original has precedence and is the true first. The first English edition — collected in its own right — is A GUIDE TO MODERN COOKERY, William Heinemann, London, 1907: xiii + 880 pp., an ABRIDGED translation of the 1903 text carrying a glossary, 2,973 numbered recipes and about twenty pages of menus; publisher's forest-green cloth lettered in gilt on spine and front board, photogravure portrait frontispiece with tissue guard, all edges green, marbled endpapers, publisher's advert on the verso of the half-title. First printing May 1907; a second impression followed in December 1907, so a Heinemann copy must be free of a later-impression statement. FIRST-THUS TRAP: the Cracknell & Kaufmann translation (Butterworth-Heinemann, 1979; reissued by Wiley 2011 as Escoffier: The Complete Guide to the Art of Modern Cookery) is billed as the first complete English rendering but translates the 1921 FOURTH French edition — it is a first thus, not a first of Le Guide Culinaire.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue is documented. The reprint traps are the later authorial editions — 2nd 1907, 3rd 1912, 4th 1921 (Flammarion) — each reset and expanded, plus the 1979/2011 Cracknell-Kaufmann English translations and modern print-on-demand volumes marketed as "Edition intégrale et originale 1903," which are facsimile/reset reprints and not the 1903 sheets.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Le Guide Culinaire* by Auguste Escoffier a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/le-guide-culinaire
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.