# Is "The Blue Fairy Book" by Andrew Lang (ed.) a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang (ed.) (Longmans, Green and Co., 1889) is identified by: Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1889. UK Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1889 is the true first, and the census claim is correct.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1889
- The 1889 first edition appears in two issues
- The trade issue (a comparatively small run of about 5,000 copies, against as many as 15,000 for later volumes in the series) is bound in original blue cloth pictorially blocked in gilt — a witch riding a broomstick on the front board, an ogre on the spine — with all edges gilt
- 390pp, with a frontispiece and seven further plates (eight in all) plus frequent in-text illustrations by H. J. Ford and G. P. Jacomb-Hood
- Dealer description records 16pp of publisher's advertisements dated August 1889 bound in at the rear as a first-issue point; that ad-date point traces to a single ABAA dealer's cataloguing rather than to two independent authorities, so collate it but do not treat it as decisive on its own
- The large-paper deluxe issue is limited to 113 numbered copies, small 4to, edges uncut, with a paper label to the spine and collating [vi], xxi, [i], 390pp; its decisive and well-corroborated point is textual — the deluxe issue alone carries a Lang preface on the origins of the tales that is not printed in the trade issue
- Publisher imprint reads Longmans, Green and Co.

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Andrew Lang (ed.) |
| Publisher | Longmans, Green and Co. |
| Year | 1889 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Children's / illustrated |
| Key point | Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1889 |
| Book-club edition exists? | — |

## Points of issue
Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1889. The 1889 first edition appears in two issues. The trade issue (a comparatively small run of about 5,000 copies, against as many as 15,000 for later volumes in the series) is bound in original blue cloth pictorially blocked in gilt — a witch riding a broomstick on the front board, an ogre on the spine — with all edges gilt; 390pp, with a frontispiece and seven further plates (eight in all) plus frequent in-text illustrations by H. J. Ford and G. P. Jacomb-Hood. Dealer description records 16pp of publisher's advertisements dated August 1889 bound in at the rear as a first-issue point; that ad-date point traces to a single ABAA dealer's cataloguing rather than to two independent authorities, so collate it but do not treat it as decisive on its own. The large-paper deluxe issue is limited to 113 numbered copies, small 4to, edges uncut, with a paper label to the spine and collating [vi], xxi, [i], 390pp; its decisive and well-corroborated point is textual — the deluxe issue alone carries a Lang preface on the origins of the tales that is not printed in the trade issue. Binding of the large-paper copies is described variously by dealers as paper-backed boards and as quarter vellum with paper label; treat neither as definitive.

## Is this the true first?
UK Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1889 is the true first, and the census claim is correct. The contemporaneous Longmans New York imprint (11 East 16th St, which appears on the large-paper title) is the publisher's own American branch issue of the same London printing rather than a separate American edition, so there is no genuine UK-vs-US precedence contest here. Both the trade issue and the large-paper issue are 1889 firsts; the large paper is the deluxe issue and is textually the fuller of the two by virtue of the extra preface. This is the first of the twelve 'coloured' Fairy Books and the scarcest of the run.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
Longmans reprinted the title repeatedly into the twentieth century, retaining the same setting; later printings carry advertisement catalogues of later date rather than the August 1889 catalogue, and commonly abandon the all-gilt edges and the full pictorial gilt cloth. Principal trap is 'first thus': the many later illustrated reissues, and modern Dover and Folio Society reprints, are routinely offered as 'first editions' of a given format and are not the 1889 first.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Blue Fairy Book* by Andrew Lang (ed.) a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-blue-fairy-book
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.