# Is "Pony Tracks" by Frederic Remington a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Pony Tracks by Frederic Remington (Harper & Brothers, 1895) is identified by: First edition, first printing: Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square, New York, 1895. Census claim confirmed.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition, first printing: Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square, New York, 1895
- The textual test is the 1895 title-page date with no later printing listed on the copyright page — Harper used no month/year printing code at this date, so there is no positive statement to find
- Octavo, collating viii, [2], 269, [3] pp., with 70 Remington illustrations: the frontispiece (with tissue guard) plus 69 full-page black-and-white plates; a complete copy must have all 70 and the tissue
- Standard binding is publisher's decorated/pictorial cloth lettered in gilt on the front cover and spine; dealer descriptions of the cloth differ (brown/tan versus orange), so colour is not a reliable printing point
- A scarcer issue in suede leather also exists and is notoriously fragile — a binding variant of the 1895 sheets, not a later state
- References: BAL 16489, Howes R-207, Graff 3458
- Publisher imprint reads Harper & Brothers

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Frederic Remington |
| Publisher | Harper & Brothers |
| Year | 1895 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | First edition, first printing: Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square, New York, 1895 |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
First edition, first printing: Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square, New York, 1895. The textual test is the 1895 title-page date with no later printing listed on the copyright page — Harper used no month/year printing code at this date, so there is no positive statement to find. Octavo, collating viii, [2], 269, [3] pp., with 70 Remington illustrations: the frontispiece (with tissue guard) plus 69 full-page black-and-white plates; a complete copy must have all 70 and the tissue. Standard binding is publisher's decorated/pictorial cloth lettered in gilt on the front cover and spine; dealer descriptions of the cloth differ (brown/tan versus orange), so colour is not a reliable printing point. A scarcer issue in suede leather also exists and is notoriously fragile — a binding variant of the 1895 sheets, not a later state. References: BAL 16489, Howes R-207, Graff 3458. No first-state text errors are documented in the sources consulted.

## Is this the true first?
Census claim confirmed. US first, and Remington's first book as author (he had illustrated others' books earlier). Harper & Brothers, New York, 1895 is the true first; no separately set British edition is documented in the sources consulted, so there is no UK/US precedence contest. The live "first thus" trap is the University of Oklahoma Press edition (Norman, 1961) in The Western Frontier Library, with an introduction by J. Frank Dobie — reset and reduced (c. 174 pp.), and routinely mislisted as a first edition.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue documented for the 1895 Harper printing. Reprint tells: any imprint other than Harper & Brothers rules out the first — notably University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1961 (Western Frontier Library; Dobie introduction; reduced page count), and later Bison/Nebraska-era reissues. A later Harper issue in a different format is reported (c. 1898); it will not collate to viii, [2], 269, [3] pp. with 70 plates.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Pony Tracks* by Frederic Remington a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/pony-tracks
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.