# Is "The Adventures of Philip on His Way Through the World" by William Makepeace Thackeray a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Adventures of Philip on His Way Through the World by William Makepeace Thackeray (Smith, Elder & Co., 1862) is identified by: First edition, three volumes, octavo, collating [5],329pp.; [4],304pp.; [4],301pp., following serialization in the Cornhill Magazine from January 1861 to August 1862, for which Thackeray drew the first illustrations himself before turning the series over to Frederick Walker to complete. Bernhard Tauchnitz's Leipzig edition of the same year, in two volumes, was a Continental 'copyright edition' for sale outside Britain and is not a competing first edition; the Smith, Elder & Co.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition, three volumes, octavo, collating [5],329pp.; [4],304pp.; [4],301pp., following serialization in the Cornhill Magazine from January 1861 to August 1862, for which Thackeray drew the first illustrations himself before turning the series over to Frederick Walker to complete
- The true first issue is bound in the publisher's green pebbled cloth with the title in gilt on the spine and yellow endpapers
- A second issue of the same year appeared in brown cloth with more conventional blind-and-gilt blocking on the covers
- John Carter's Binding Variants in English Publishing records a print run of 1,520 copies for that later state
- Cited as Sadleir 3186 and Wolff 4088
- Publisher imprint reads Smith, Elder & Co.
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | William Makepeace Thackeray |
| Publisher | Smith, Elder & Co. |
| Year | 1862 |
| True first | — |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | First edition, three volumes, octavo, collating [5],329pp.; [4],304pp.; [4],301pp., following serialization in the Cornhill Magazine from… |
| Book-club edition exists? | — |

## Points of issue
First edition, three volumes, octavo, collating [5],329pp.; [4],304pp.; [4],301pp., following serialization in the Cornhill Magazine from January 1861 to August 1862, for which Thackeray drew the first illustrations himself before turning the series over to Frederick Walker to complete. The true first issue is bound in the publisher's green pebbled cloth with the title in gilt on the spine and yellow endpapers. A second issue of the same year appeared in brown cloth with more conventional blind-and-gilt blocking on the covers; John Carter's Binding Variants in English Publishing records a print run of 1,520 copies for that later state. Cited as Sadleir 3186 and Wolff 4088.

## Is this the true first?
Bernhard Tauchnitz's Leipzig edition of the same year, in two volumes, was a Continental 'copyright edition' for sale outside Britain and is not a competing first edition; the Smith, Elder & Co. three-volume London printing is the accepted first edition.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
Sets bound in brown cloth with more conventional blind-and-gilt blocking (Sadleir's second issue) are a later 1862 state of the same first-edition text, not the scarcer true-first green pebbled-cloth issue.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Adventures of Philip on His Way Through the World* by William Makepeace Thackeray a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-adventures-of-philip-on-his-way-through-the-world
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.