# Is "The Conspiracy of Pontiac" by Francis Parkman a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Conspiracy of Pontiac by Francis Parkman (Little, Brown and Company, 1851) is identified by: Boston: Little, Brown, 1851, a single octavo volume -- not yet split into the two volumes of Parkman's later revised printings -- collating xxiv, 630 pages with four maps, bound in brown cloth (Howes P100).

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Boston: Little, Brown, 1851, a single octavo volume -- not yet split into the two volumes of Parkman's later revised printings -- collating xxiv, 630 pages with four maps, bound in brown cloth (Howes P100)
- This was Parkman's first published work of history, though not his first book overall: it followed his travel narrative "The Oregon Trail"
- by two years and opened the sequence of frontier and Indian-war histories that occupied the rest of his career
- Because Parkman kept revising the text for decades, a true first must show the single-volume 1851 collation and the Little, Brown imprint rather than the reset, expanded two-volume settings issued later under the same title
- Publisher imprint reads Little, Brown and Company
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Francis Parkman |
| Publisher | Little, Brown and Company |
| Year | 1851 |
| True first | — |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Boston: Little, Brown, 1851, a single octavo volume -- not yet split into the two volumes of Parkman's later revised printings -- collating… |
| Book-club edition exists? | — |

## Points of issue
Boston: Little, Brown, 1851, a single octavo volume -- not yet split into the two volumes of Parkman's later revised printings -- collating xxiv, 630 pages with four maps, bound in brown cloth (Howes P100). This was Parkman's first published work of history, though not his first book overall: it followed his travel narrative "The Oregon Trail" (1849) by two years and opened the sequence of frontier and Indian-war histories that occupied the rest of his career. Because Parkman kept revising the text for decades, a true first must show the single-volume 1851 collation and the Little, Brown imprint rather than the reset, expanded two-volume settings issued later under the same title.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
Starting with an enlarged edition in 1870 -- which incorporated newly available Bouquet and Haldimand papers from the British Museum -- Little, Brown reset and reissued the work as a two-volume "revised edition," and later folded it into multivolume "Works of Francis Parkman" library sets; these two-volume printings, despite the similar title and publisher, are not the 1851 first edition.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Conspiracy of Pontiac* by Francis Parkman a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-conspiracy-of-pontiac
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.