# Is "The Boxcar Children" by Gertrude Chandler Warner (illus. Dorothy Lake Gregory) a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner (illus. Dorothy Lake Gregory) (Rand McNally & Company, 1924) is identified by: The true first is titled "The Box-Car Children" — hyphenated — with the imprint "Chicago and New York: Rand McNally & Company, 1924"; the modern one-word "Boxcar" title belongs to the rewritten text and is itself a precedence tell. US-only true first, and the census trap is confirmed: Rand McNally & Company (Chicago and New York), 1924, is the true first.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The true first is titled "The Box-Car Children" — hyphenated — with the imprint "Chicago and New York: Rand McNally & Company, 1924"; the modern one-word "Boxcar" title belongs to the rewritten text and is itself a precedence tell
- Octavo (approx
- 7.75 x 5.375 in.), collating 146 pages, with four colored plates and a title vignette by Dorothy Lake Gregory; bound in original full blue cloth with a Gregory pictorial plate mounted to the upper cover, lettered and ruled in gilt, spine gilt-lettered
- The 1924 text is distinguishable from the 1942 rewrite by internal points confirmed against the original text itself: the dog Watch is an Airedale (a wire fox terrier in the rewrite), the doctor is Dr
- McAllister (Dr
- Moore in the rewrite), Henry is 13 and Benny 5 (14 and 6 in the rewrite), and the vocabulary is unrestricted
- Publisher imprint reads Rand McNally & Company

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Gertrude Chandler Warner (illus. Dorothy Lake Gregory) |
| Publisher | Rand McNally & Company |
| Year | 1924 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Children's / illustrated |
| Key point | The true first is titled "The Box-Car Children" — hyphenated — with the imprint "Chicago and New York: Rand McNally & Company, 1924"; the… |
| Book-club edition exists? | — |

## Points of issue
The true first is titled "The Box-Car Children" — hyphenated — with the imprint "Chicago and New York: Rand McNally & Company, 1924"; the modern one-word "Boxcar" title belongs to the rewritten text and is itself a precedence tell. Octavo (approx. 7.75 x 5.375 in.), collating 146 pages, with four colored plates and a title vignette by Dorothy Lake Gregory; bound in original full blue cloth with a Gregory pictorial plate mounted to the upper cover, lettered and ruled in gilt, spine gilt-lettered. The 1924 text is distinguishable from the 1942 rewrite by internal points confirmed against the original text itself: the dog Watch is an Airedale (a wire fox terrier in the rewrite), the doctor is Dr. McAllister (Dr. Moore in the rewrite), Henry is 13 and Benny 5 (14 and 6 in the rewrite), and the vocabulary is unrestricted. No copyright-page printing statement or issue point separating printings within the 1924 Rand McNally format is documented in the sources consulted, and no dust jacket is described in the auction record examined — the edition itself, not a stated point, is the identification.

## Is this the true first?
US-only true first, and the census trap is confirmed: Rand McNally & Company (Chicago and New York), 1924, is the true first. Warner rewrote the book in 1942 for Scott, Foresman and Company, cutting it to roughly 15,000 words within a prescribed 600-word vocabulary for use as a school reader — that 1942 Scott, Foresman text is the version now universally known and is a "first thus," not the first edition. The University of Southern Mississippi de Grummond Collection's Warner finding aid confirms the Scott, Foresman attribution for the 1942 revision; note that Wikipedia attributes the 1942 revision to Albert Whitman & Company, which the archival source contradicts. Albert Whitman & Company published Warner's later series titles from 1949 onward and eventually became the exclusive publisher. No UK or foreign-language edition precedes 1924.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
Everything bearing the one-word "Boxcar Children" title descends from the 1942 Scott, Foresman rewrite or the later Albert Whitman series and is a reprint or a first thus. Modern facsimile/reprint editions of the original text are an active trap: Albert Whitman's "The Box-Car Children: The Original 1924 Edition" (ISBN 9780807510322), the Dover reissue (ISBN 9780486838519), and a full-color reprint (ISBN 9781645940487) all reproduce the 1924 text and Gregory illustrations but are current-imprint reprints. The 1924 text is also freely available at Project Gutenberg (ebook 42796), which confirms the original readings but is not a physical issue point.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Boxcar Children* by Gertrude Chandler Warner (illus. Dorothy Lake Gregory) a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-boxcar-children
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.