# Is "The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book" by Fannie Merritt Farmer a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt Farmer (Little, Brown and Company, 1896) is identified by: Census claim confirmed. US only — the book was not published in Britain and there is no original-language question, so the 1896 Little, Brown Boston printing is the unambiguous true first.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition: Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1896, in an edition of 3,000 copies — Little, Brown doubted the book and required Farmer to pay for the printing herself, which is why she retained the copyright
- Points: title page dated 1896 with the Little, Brown, and Company Boston imprint; collation xxx + 567 pp., followed by roughly twenty pages of publisher's advertisements and terminal blanks; original publisher's cloth
- There is NO printing statement, edition statement or number line — the 1896 title-page date and the 567-page collation are the only discriminators the sources document, and the two 1897 reprints and the annual reprints that followed carry their own later title-page dates
- Collation is the practical test: the 1904 reprinting runs to about 666 pp. plus twenty pages of ads, so any copy exceeding 567 pages of text is not the first
- Original cloth is scarce; many surviving copies have been rebound, and a rebound copy cannot be authenticated by binding
- Publisher imprint reads Little, Brown and Company
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Fannie Merritt Farmer |
| Publisher | Little, Brown and Company |
| Year | 1896 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | First edition: Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1896, in an edition of 3,000 copies — Little, Brown doubted the book and required Farmer… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Census claim confirmed. First edition: Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1896, in an edition of 3,000 copies — Little, Brown doubted the book and required Farmer to pay for the printing herself, which is why she retained the copyright. Points: title page dated 1896 with the Little, Brown, and Company Boston imprint; collation xxx + 567 pp., followed by roughly twenty pages of publisher's advertisements and terminal blanks; original publisher's cloth. There is NO printing statement, edition statement or number line — the 1896 title-page date and the 567-page collation are the only discriminators the sources document, and the two 1897 reprints and the annual reprints that followed carry their own later title-page dates. Collation is the practical test: the 1904 reprinting runs to about 666 pp. plus twenty pages of ads, so any copy exceeding 567 pages of text is not the first. Original cloth is scarce; many surviving copies have been rebound, and a rebound copy cannot be authenticated by binding.

## Is this the true first?
US only — the book was not published in Britain and there is no original-language question, so the 1896 Little, Brown Boston printing is the unambiguous true first. RETITLING / FIRST-THUS TRAPS: a revised edition appeared in 1906; the 8th edition (1946) was retitled Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking School Cook Book; the 11th edition (1965) became simply The Fannie Farmer Cookbook; Marion Cunningham revised the 12th and 13th editions (13th, 1990, reissued 1996 for the centenary, Knopf). Thirteen editions ran 1896-1990, the text growing from 567 to 874 pages — none of the retitlings is a first of this book.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No contemporary book-club issue is documented. The reprint tells that matter are the facsimiles, which are common and are routinely offered as the 1896 book: the Weathervane/Crown "The Original Boston Cooking School Cook Book, 1896," the Ottenheimer issue, and the Dover 1997 "The Original 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book" (ISBN 0-486-29697-5), an unabridged republication. All reproduce the 1896 title page, so the tell is the modern binding, modern paper, and the publisher's own imprint and ISBN on the verso — an 1896 title page inside a perfect-bound or modern cased volume is a facsimile.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book* by Fannie Merritt Farmer a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-boston-cooking-school-cook-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.