# Is "The Adventures of Captain Bonneville" by Washington Irving a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Adventures of Captain Bonneville by Washington Irving (Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1837) is identified by: Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1837, two volumes of 248 pages each, bound in original blue cloth with paper spine labels, each volume with a folding map as frontispiece and a publisher's catalogue bound in at the end of volume two (BAL 10151). Bentley's London edition, titled "The Adventures of Captain Bonneville," is a separate, differently titled printing; the Philadelphia "Rocky Mountains" printing is the American first.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1837, two volumes of 248 pages each, bound in original blue cloth with paper spine labels, each volume with a folding map as frontispiece and a publisher's catalogue bound in at the end of volume two (BAL 10151)
- Crucially, the American first edition is titled "THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS: OR, SCENES, INCIDENTS, AND ADVENTURES IN THE FAR WEST" on its title page -- not "The Adventures of Captain Bonneville," the title used by Richard Bentley's contemporary three-volume London edition and later adopted for American reprints
- Irving compiled the book from the manuscript journal of army officer and fur trader Benjamin Bonneville, whose western adventures Irving had purchased the rights to write up
- Publisher imprint reads Carey, Lea & Blanchard
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Washington Irving |
| Publisher | Carey, Lea & Blanchard |
| Year | 1837 |
| True first | American edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1837, two volumes of 248 pages each, bound in original blue cloth with paper spine labels, each… |
| Book-club edition exists? | — |

## Points of issue
Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1837, two volumes of 248 pages each, bound in original blue cloth with paper spine labels, each volume with a folding map as frontispiece and a publisher's catalogue bound in at the end of volume two (BAL 10151). Crucially, the American first edition is titled "THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS: OR, SCENES, INCIDENTS, AND ADVENTURES IN THE FAR WEST" on its title page -- not "The Adventures of Captain Bonneville," the title used by Richard Bentley's contemporary three-volume London edition and later adopted for American reprints. Irving compiled the book from the manuscript journal of army officer and fur trader Benjamin Bonneville, whose western adventures Irving had purchased the rights to write up.

## Is this the true first?
Bentley's London edition, titled "The Adventures of Captain Bonneville," is a separate, differently titled printing; the Philadelphia "Rocky Mountains" printing is the American first.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
Later American reprints retitle the book "The Adventures of Captain Bonneville" to match its now-familiar name, a change that began with Irving's own revised Putnam edition of 1849 ("The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, U.S.A., in the Rocky Mountains and the Far West"); a copy under that title on the title page is not the 1837 first edition, which must carry the original "Rocky Mountains" title.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Adventures of Captain Bonneville* by Washington Irving a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-adventures-of-captain-bonneville
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.