# Is "The American Shore" by Samuel R. Delany a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The American Shore by Samuel R. Delany (Dragon Press, 1978) is identified by: Book-length critical study of Thomas M. US Dragon Press edition (1978) is the true first.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Book-length critical study of Thomas M. Disch's story Angouleme (from the sequence 334)
- First edition, Dragon Press 1978, an octavo bound in cloth and issued without a dust jacket; collating roughly pp. [1-10] i-v [vi] 1-243 with terminal blanks
- The edition comprises 949 trade copies plus 100 copies numbered and signed by Delany; the signed copies are otherwise identical in binding to the trade issue
- Publisher imprint reads Dragon Press
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Samuel R. Delany |
| Publisher | Dragon Press |
| Year | 1978 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Book-length critical study of Thomas M. Disch's story Angouleme (from the sequence 334) |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Book-length critical study of Thomas M. Disch's story Angouleme (from the sequence 334). First edition, Dragon Press 1978, an octavo bound in cloth and issued without a dust jacket; collating roughly pp. [1-10] i-v [vi] 1-243 with terminal blanks. The edition comprises 949 trade copies plus 100 copies numbered and signed by Delany; the signed copies are otherwise identical in binding to the trade issue.

## Is this the true first?
US Dragon Press edition (1978) is the true first. Reissued by Wesleyan University Press in 2014 with a new introduction by Matthew Cheney; that later trade edition is not the first.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
None.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The American Shore* by Samuel R. Delany a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-american-shore
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.