# Is "The Brave Bulls" by Tom Lea a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Brave Bulls by Tom Lea (Little, Brown and Company, 1949) is identified by: The copyright page is the point: Little, Brown first printings from 1940 onward carry a stated "FIRST EDITION" or "First Printing," and later printings of this title add an explicit reprinting statement — the book sold hard and was reprinted repeatedly within April 1949 and again in May, with dealer-catalogued copies running to a ninth reprinting in the first year alone. US Little, Brown and Company (Boston), 1949 is the true first, confirmed by the Tom Lea Institute's own bibliography and by ABAA-level catalogue descriptions; the novel had been serialised in the Atlantic Monthly beforehand, which is a prior appearance in periodical form, not a competing edition.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The copyright page is the point: Little, Brown first printings from 1940 onward carry a stated "FIRST EDITION" or "First Printing," and later printings of this title add an explicit reprinting statement — the book sold hard and was reprinted repeatedly within April 1949 and again in May, with dealer-catalogued copies running to a ninth reprinting in the first year alone
- Any copyright page bearing a reprinting or later-printing line rules the copy out; number lines are irrelevant here, since Little, Brown did not adopt them until the late 1970s, so "no number line" is not an affirmative first-printing point despite being repeated in trade listings
- The first printing is bound in the publisher's original pictorial pink cloth stamped in black and silver, with pictorial endpapers depicting the bullfighter's stance, a full-colour illustrated title page, and the author's black-and-white illustrations throughout; collation is 270 pages
- The jacket should be present and priced at the flap
- Some copies carry a tipped-in sheet signed by Lea, in an unrecorded quantity — a signature state, not a printing point
- Publisher imprint reads Little, Brown and Company
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Tom Lea |
| Publisher | Little, Brown and Company |
| Year | 1949 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | The copyright page is the point: Little, Brown first printings from 1940 onward carry a stated "FIRST EDITION" or "First Printing," and… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
The copyright page is the point: Little, Brown first printings from 1940 onward carry a stated "FIRST EDITION" or "First Printing," and later printings of this title add an explicit reprinting statement — the book sold hard and was reprinted repeatedly within April 1949 and again in May, with dealer-catalogued copies running to a ninth reprinting in the first year alone. Any copyright page bearing a reprinting or later-printing line rules the copy out; number lines are irrelevant here, since Little, Brown did not adopt them until the late 1970s, so "no number line" is not an affirmative first-printing point despite being repeated in trade listings. The first printing is bound in the publisher's original pictorial pink cloth stamped in black and silver, with pictorial endpapers depicting the bullfighter's stance, a full-colour illustrated title page, and the author's black-and-white illustrations throughout; collation is 270 pages. The jacket should be present and priced at the flap. Some copies carry a tipped-in sheet signed by Lea, in an unrecorded quantity — a signature state, not a printing point.

## Is this the true first?
US Little, Brown and Company (Boston), 1949 is the true first, confirmed by the Tom Lea Institute's own bibliography and by ABAA-level catalogue descriptions; the novel had been serialised in the Atlantic Monthly beforehand, which is a prior appearance in periodical form, not a competing edition. The first UK edition is William Heinemann (London), 1950 — a year later, so it holds no precedence, though it is collected. A Horwitz (Sydney) 1960 Australian edition and the Pocket Books (1951) and Penguin (1953) paperbacks are all reprints/first-thus traps. This was Lea's first book and it won the Texas Institute of Letters' Carr P. Collins Award.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue of the Little, Brown edition is documented in the sources consulted. The practical reprint trap on this title is not a club copy but the flood of same-year Little, Brown reprintings in the identical pink pictorial cloth — they are distinguished only by the reprinting statement on the copyright page, so the binding cannot be used to tell a first printing from a 1949 reprint.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Brave Bulls* by Tom Lea a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-brave-bulls
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.