# Is "Look, Stranger!" by W. H. Auden a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Look, Stranger! by W. H. Auden (Faber & Faber, London, 1936) is identified by: First edition: Faber & Faber, London, 1936 — Bloomfield & Mendelson A13, the standard citation, cited independently by multiple ABAA/ILAB dealers. UK first, and both editions are collected under their different titles — the census claim is confirmed in full.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition: Faber & Faber, London, 1936 — Bloomfield & Mendelson A13, the standard citation, cited independently by multiple ABAA/ILAB dealers
- Octavo, 68 pages, containing thirty-one poems opening with a "Prologue" ("O Love the interest itself in thoughtless heaven") and closing with an "Epilogue" ("Certainly our city")
- Binding is publisher's grey, lettered in gilt on the spine; dealers split on whether to call it grey cloth or grey boards, so treat the colour and gilt spine as the point and the substrate description as dealer variance
- The dust jacket is yellow paper printed in pink and black — an unusually specific and checkable jacket point for a Faber book of this period, and the jacket should be present and unclipped, with the price present at the flap
- Faber of this era carried no number line: the verso gives the first-publication statement alone on the first impression, and later impressions add an impression line
- A second British impression followed in December 1936 and is so designated on the verso; a copy whose verso names any impression after the first is not the first printing
- Publisher imprint reads Faber & Faber, London

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | W. H. Auden |
| Publisher | Faber & Faber, London |
| Year | 1936 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Poetry |
| Key point | First edition: Faber & Faber, London, 1936 — Bloomfield & Mendelson A13, the standard citation, cited independently by multiple ABAA/ILAB… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
First edition: Faber & Faber, London, 1936 — Bloomfield & Mendelson A13, the standard citation, cited independently by multiple ABAA/ILAB dealers. Octavo, 68 pages, containing thirty-one poems opening with a "Prologue" ("O Love the interest itself in thoughtless heaven") and closing with an "Epilogue" ("Certainly our city"). Binding is publisher's grey, lettered in gilt on the spine; dealers split on whether to call it grey cloth or grey boards, so treat the colour and gilt spine as the point and the substrate description as dealer variance. The dust jacket is yellow paper printed in pink and black — an unusually specific and checkable jacket point for a Faber book of this period, and the jacket should be present and unclipped, with the price present at the flap. Faber of this era carried no number line: the verso gives the first-publication statement alone on the first impression, and later impressions add an impression line. A second British impression followed in December 1936 and is so designated on the verso; a copy whose verso names any impression after the first is not the first printing.

## Is this the true first?
UK first, and both editions are collected under their different titles — the census claim is confirmed in full. Faber issued the book in London in 1936 as Look, Stranger!, a title chosen by the publisher while Auden was in Iceland and unreachable, and which he disliked ("It sounds like the work of a vegetarian lady novelist"); he had proposed Thirty-One Poems. The American edition followed from Random House, New York, 1937, under Auden's own preferred title On This Island — Bloomfield & Mendelson A13b — in brown boards lettered in gilt on the front panel and spine, octavo, 68 pages. Same thirty-one poems, same Prologue/Epilogue structure; the two are the same book under two titles, with the London 1936 Faber issue holding priority. Collectors who want the author-sanctioned title need the New York 1937 book, which does not displace the UK first.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue is documented for either the Faber or the Random House edition. The reprint tells are the Faber impressions (second British impression December 1936, and later impressions, each so stated on the verso) and the modern Faber reprint of 2001, which carries the Look, Stranger! title and can mislead on a spine glance. The other standing trap is cataloguing confusion in the other direction: because the American title is On This Island, dealer records and library catalogues file the same work under both titles, and On This Island (Random House 1937) is regularly offered as though it were the first edition of the collection when it is the first American edition.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Look, Stranger!* by W. H. Auden a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/look-stranger
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.