# Is "Sartoris" by William Faulkner a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Sartoris by William Faulkner (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1929) is identified by: The first printing carries the 1929 copyright with no printing statement on the copyright page; Harcourt, Brace noted its later printings, so any printing line indicates a later state. Census claim confirmed.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The first printing carries the 1929 copyright with no printing statement on the copyright page
- Harcourt, Brace noted its later printings, so any printing line indicates a later state
- Octavo, 380 pages, bound in black cloth with the title lettered in red on the spine and front cover, top edge stained red
- 1,998 copies were printed
- The jacket was designed by Arthur Hawkins Jr
- Dealers cite Petersen A5.1 (given by some as A5a) and Massey 289
- Publisher imprint reads Harcourt, Brace and Company

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | William Faulkner |
| Publisher | Harcourt, Brace and Company |
| Year | 1929 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | The first printing carries the 1929 copyright with no printing statement on the copyright page |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
The first printing carries the 1929 copyright with no printing statement on the copyright page; Harcourt, Brace noted its later printings, so any printing line indicates a later state. Octavo, 380 pages, bound in black cloth with the title lettered in red on the spine and front cover, top edge stained red; 1,998 copies were printed. The jacket was designed by Arthur Hawkins Jr. Dealers cite Petersen A5.1 (given by some as A5a) and Massey 289. One textual point is widely repeated in the trade: "Bendow" for the character name "Benbow" at page 179, reported as present in the first printing and corrected afterward. Multiple dealer catalogues carry it, but it could not be confirmed here directly against a bibliography, so use it as corroboration alongside the absent printing statement rather than as the decisive test.

## Is this the true first?
Census claim confirmed. The true first is Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, published 31 January 1929 — the only Faulkner title Harcourt, Brace issued, and the debut of Yoknapatawpha County. The first UK edition is Chatto & Windus, London, 1932; it is collected as the English first but does not precede. The first-thus trap is Flags in the Dust (Random House, 1973, edited with an introduction by Douglas Day), which restores the full manuscript that Harcourt cut by roughly 40,000 words to make Sartoris. It is the first edition of the complete text, not a first edition of Sartoris, and the two are frequently conflated in catalogue copy.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No first-printing book-club issue is documented. The common reprints are the Grosset & Dunlap issue and the later Random House issue, both plainly stated. Because the Harcourt first itself carries no edition statement, the characteristic pitfall is a reprint-publisher copy that also has nothing on the copyright page — check the imprint on the spine and title page and the black cloth/red lettering/red top edge combination, not the copyright page alone.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Sartoris* by William Faulkner a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/sartoris
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.