# Is "Monte Walsh" by Jack Schaefer a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Monte Walsh by Jack Schaefer (Houghton Mifflin, 1963) is identified by: "First Edition, First Printing" is stated on the copyright page — quoted verbatim in the Page 1 Books (Special Collection Room) listing on AbeBooks and reported independently in the Biblio dealer record for the 1963 Houghton Mifflin issue. Houghton Mifflin (Boston) 1963 is the true first worldwide and the only edition seriously collected; the census is confirmed on publisher, city and year.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- "First Edition, First Printing" is stated on the copyright page — quoted verbatim in the Page 1 Books (Special Collection Room) listing on AbeBooks and reported independently in the Biblio dealer record for the 1963 Houghton Mifflin issue
- Octavo, 501 pp, bound with a cream cloth spine over brown boards; issued in a priced jacket, with the price present at the front flap on unclipped copies
- Houghton Mifflin's better-known house rule — the date in arabic numerals on the title page of first printings, removed on later printings — is documented in the standard publisher guides (ILAB, Quill & Brush, Evening Land Books) only for the period up to about the 1950s, so for a 1963 book the copyright-page statement is the operative point rather than the title-page date
- A 1963-dated Houghton Mifflin copy lacking that statement is a later printing
- LCCN 63013684
- OCLC 1289952
- Publisher imprint reads Houghton Mifflin

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Jack Schaefer |
| Publisher | Houghton Mifflin |
| Year | 1963 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | "First Edition, First Printing" is stated on the copyright page — quoted verbatim in the Page 1 Books (Special Collection Room) listing on… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
"First Edition, First Printing" is stated on the copyright page — quoted verbatim in the Page 1 Books (Special Collection Room) listing on AbeBooks and reported independently in the Biblio dealer record for the 1963 Houghton Mifflin issue. Octavo, 501 pp, bound with a cream cloth spine over brown boards; issued in a priced jacket, with the price present at the front flap on unclipped copies. Houghton Mifflin's better-known house rule — the date in arabic numerals on the title page of first printings, removed on later printings — is documented in the standard publisher guides (ILAB, Quill & Brush, Evening Land Books) only for the period up to about the 1950s, so for a 1963 book the copyright-page statement is the operative point rather than the title-page date. A 1963-dated Houghton Mifflin copy lacking that statement is a later printing. LCCN 63013684; OCLC 1289952.

## Is this the true first?
Houghton Mifflin (Boston) 1963 is the true first worldwide and the only edition seriously collected; the census is confirmed on publisher, city and year. The census's UK claim — André Deutsch, 1965 — could NOT be confirmed and should be treated as an error: no such edition surfaced in any source consulted. The earliest UK issue documented is a Corgi (Transworld, London) paperback of 1966; André Deutsch did publish Schaefer's Mavericks in London in 1968, which is the likely source of the confusion. No UK edition competes with the US first on precedence in any event.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club edition of Monte Walsh is documented in the sources consulted, and none should be asserted. The operative reprint tell is the copyright page: a 1963-dated Houghton Mifflin copy without the "First Edition, First Printing" statement is a later printing, not a first. Later reissues — the Corgi (London) 1966 paperback, a University of Nebraska Press edition, and a University of New Mexico Press edition carrying a Marc Simmons foreword — are reprints or "first thus," not firsts.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Monte Walsh* by Jack Schaefer a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/monte-walsh
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.