# Is "No Orchids for Miss Blandish" by James Hadley Chase a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of No Orchids for Miss Blandish by James Hadley Chase (Jarrolds, 1939) is identified by: First published London: Jarrolds, May 1939; the first impression collates 255 pp. The census claim stands: Jarrolds, London, 1939 is the true first, and no other edition competes for precedence.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First published London: Jarrolds, May 1939; the first impression collates 255 pp. followed by a 16-page publisher's catalogue (advertisements) bound in at the rear, in a plain cloth lettered in black at the spine, about 7½ inches tall
- Dealer descriptions of the cloth conflict on shade — one ABAA-level catalogue calls it grey with black titles, another light blue lettered in black — so treat the shade as unsettled and rely on the collation plus the absence of an impression statement
- Jarrolds stated its reprints on the verso by cumulative "thousand" counts rather than by printing number: a the printed pricet thousand appeared in August 1940, and 56th and 367th thousand impressions are recorded, so any "thousand" line rules out the first impression
- Jarrolds reprinted the hardcover again in 1942 and 1947
- First-impression copies are genuinely scarce because the remaining stock is reported to have been destroyed when the publisher's warehouse was bombed during the Blitz
- The jacket is the pictorial Jarrolds wrapper with the price present at the flap; facsimile jackets are common on this title
- Publisher imprint reads Jarrolds

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | James Hadley Chase |
| Publisher | Jarrolds |
| Year | 1939 |
| True first | American edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | First published London: Jarrolds, May 1939; the first impression collates 255 pp. followed by a 16-page publisher's catalogue… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
First published London: Jarrolds, May 1939; the first impression collates 255 pp. followed by a 16-page publisher's catalogue (advertisements) bound in at the rear, in a plain cloth lettered in black at the spine, about 7½ inches tall. Dealer descriptions of the cloth conflict on shade — one ABAA-level catalogue calls it grey with black titles, another light blue lettered in black — so treat the shade as unsettled and rely on the collation plus the absence of an impression statement. Jarrolds stated its reprints on the verso by cumulative "thousand" counts rather than by printing number: a the printed pricet thousand appeared in August 1940, and 56th and 367th thousand impressions are recorded, so any "thousand" line rules out the first impression. Jarrolds reprinted the hardcover again in 1942 and 1947. First-impression copies are genuinely scarce because the remaining stock is reported to have been destroyed when the publisher's warehouse was bombed during the Blitz. The jacket is the pictorial Jarrolds wrapper with the price present at the flap; facsimile jackets are common on this title.

## Is this the true first?
The census claim stands: Jarrolds, London, 1939 is the true first, and no other edition competes for precedence. The first American edition is Howell, Soskin, New York, 1942 — publisher's turquoise/greenish-blue cloth, spine lettered in red, 254 pp. — and is collected as such, but it is a textual trap rather than a rival first: the Bear Alley Chase bibliography and the Orwell Society both record the October 1942 Jarrolds text (and the Howell, Soskin 1942 issue keyed to it) as the revised, expurgated version derived from the Chase/Robert Nesbitt stage adaptation, not the 1939 novel. A collector wanting the text George Orwell wrote about in 1944 must have the Jarrolds 1939.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue of the 1939 Jarrolds first is documented. The dominant traps are "first thus" reprints of altered texts: the wartime Jarrolds play-based edition (Oct 1942, often undated), and the 1961 rewrite issued as London: Panther and New York: Avon, for which the publisher's own note states the text was rewritten and revised by the author because the original's outmoded dialogue and 1938 atmosphere would not suit a new generation. Later Corgi and Panther paperbacks reprint the revised text. Any copy whose text differs from the 1939 setting, or that carries a "thousand" statement, is not the first impression.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *No Orchids for Miss Blandish* by James Hadley Chase a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/no-orchids-for-miss-blandish
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.