# Is "The Dark Tunnel" by Kenneth Millar (Ross Macdonald) a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Dark Tunnel by Kenneth Millar (Ross Macdonald) (Dodd, Mead & Company, 1944) is identified by: Dodd, Mead's pre-1976 practice is the governing point: the firm listed no additional printings on the copyright page of a first edition, and used no number line until 1976, so a first is identified by the absence of any later-printing notice, with 1944 present on both the title page and the copyright page. The census claim is correct: Dodd, Mead & Company, New York, 1944 is the true first, and it is Millar's true debut — the book most often missing from an otherwise complete Ross Macdonald run.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Dodd, Mead's pre-1976 practice is the governing point: the firm listed no additional printings on the copyright page of a first edition, and used no number line until 1976, so a first is identified by the absence of any later-printing notice, with 1944 present on both the title page and the copyright page
- Physically: octavo, 241 pp., bound in publisher's red cloth stamped in black; one ABAA dealer additionally records a stripe roughly a third of an inch across the top edge
- The dust jacket is pictorial and richly coloured, and a first-edition jacket is a priced jacket with the price present at the front flap — unclipped, unrestored jackets are very scarce
- This is Millar's first book, published under his real name years before the Ross Macdonald pseudonym, and it is a wartime WWII espionage thriller rather than a Lew Archer title
- Publisher imprint reads Dodd, Mead & Company
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Kenneth Millar (Ross Macdonald) |
| Publisher | Dodd, Mead & Company |
| Year | 1944 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Dodd, Mead's pre-1976 practice is the governing point: the firm listed no additional printings on the copyright page of a first edition… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Dodd, Mead's pre-1976 practice is the governing point: the firm listed no additional printings on the copyright page of a first edition, and used no number line until 1976, so a first is identified by the absence of any later-printing notice, with 1944 present on both the title page and the copyright page. Physically: octavo, 241 pp., bound in publisher's red cloth stamped in black; one ABAA dealer additionally records a stripe roughly a third of an inch across the top edge. The dust jacket is pictorial and richly coloured, and a first-edition jacket is a priced jacket with the price present at the front flap — unclipped, unrestored jackets are very scarce. This is Millar's first book, published under his real name years before the Ross Macdonald pseudonym, and it is a wartime WWII espionage thriller rather than a Lew Archer title.

## Is this the true first?
The census claim is correct: Dodd, Mead & Company, New York, 1944 is the true first, and it is Millar's true debut — the book most often missing from an otherwise complete Ross Macdonald run. No contemporaneous UK edition is documented in the sources consulted, so there is no UK-vs-US precedence question to resolve here and no second edition to name as co-first. The later retitlings are firsts thus only: a paperback reprint carrying the subtitle "The story of a homosexual spy" is recorded, and in 1955 the novel was reissued as I Die Slowly (The Dark Tunnel) under the Lion Library imprint, LL 52. Both dates rest on single sources and should be cited as reported rather than as settled.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue of the 1944 Dodd, Mead first is documented in the sources consulted. The two practical traps on this title are not club editions at all: first, facsimile dust jackets, which are so common that most copies offered in the trade carry one — a jacket should be examined for modern paper and printing before it is accepted as original; second, the retitled reprints (I Die Slowly), which are frequently listed under the original title and can be mistaken for it. Ex-library copies with stamps, spine labels, and price-clipped or pasted-down flaps are also widespread.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Dark Tunnel* by Kenneth Millar (Ross Macdonald) a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-dark-tunnel
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.