# Is "The Children of Green Knowe" by Lucy M. Boston a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston (Faber and Faber, 1954) is identified by: London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1954. The UK Faber 1954 edition is the true first.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1954
- Octavo, 157 pages, with a monochrome frontispiece and five further plates plus in-text drawings — pen-and-ink and scraperboard work by the author's son Peter Boston, which many later paperback and some later hardcover editions omit entirely
- Publisher's green cloth lettered in blue at the spine
- Publisher's pictorial dust wrapper, priced at the flap on unclipped copies
- Faber's house style for the year sets the imprint statement in roman numerals — "First published in mcmliv by Faber and Faber Limited 24 Russell Square London W.C.1" — with later impressions adding a reprint line beneath it; this wording is confirmed as Faber's 1954 practice (it is the recorded statement in Faber books of that year) rather than transcribed from a copy of this title, so treat it as house practice pending a direct collation
- A commended runner-up for the 1954 Carnegie Medal and the first of the six Green Knowe books
- Publisher imprint reads Faber and Faber

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Lucy M. Boston |
| Publisher | Faber and Faber |
| Year | 1954 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Children's / illustrated |
| Key point | London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1954 |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1954. Octavo, 157 pages, with a monochrome frontispiece and five further plates plus in-text drawings — pen-and-ink and scraperboard work by the author's son Peter Boston, which many later paperback and some later hardcover editions omit entirely. Publisher's green cloth lettered in blue at the spine. Publisher's pictorial dust wrapper, priced at the flap on unclipped copies. Faber's house style for the year sets the imprint statement in roman numerals — "First published in mcmliv by Faber and Faber Limited 24 Russell Square London W.C.1" — with later impressions adding a reprint line beneath it; this wording is confirmed as Faber's 1954 practice (it is the recorded statement in Faber books of that year) rather than transcribed from a copy of this title, so treat it as house practice pending a direct collation. A commended runner-up for the 1954 Carnegie Medal and the first of the six Green Knowe books.

## Is this the true first?
The UK Faber 1954 edition is the true first. The first American edition (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1955) follows a year later, retains the Peter Boston illustrations and also collates 157 pages; it is collected as the American first but carries no priority. Note the series retitling trap: Boston's second book, The Chimneys of Green Knowe (Faber, 1958), was issued by Harcourt as Treasure of Green Knowe — the American retitling applies to that volume, not to this one, so a "Treasure of Green Knowe" is not this book under another name.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue of the Faber first is documented in the sources consulted. The working traps are later Faber impressions (caught by the reprint line added under the roman-numeral imprint statement), the Harcourt 1955 American edition offered as a "first," the cheap later reprints and paperbacks that drop the Peter Boston illustrations altogether, and the recent Faber 70th-anniversary illustrated edition, which restores the original artwork and can mislead at a glance.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Children of Green Knowe* by Lucy M. Boston a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-children-of-green-knowe
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.