# Is "The Enormous Radio and Other Stories" by John Cheever a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Enormous Radio and Other Stories by John Cheever (Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York, 1953) is identified by: The first printing is identified by the roman numeral "I" on the copyright page — Funk & Wagnalls' first-printing code. US Funk & Wagnalls, New York, 1953 is the sole true first; the sources consulted record no contemporary UK edition, so no UK-vs-US precedence question arises.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The first printing is identified by the roman numeral "I" on the copyright page — Funk & Wagnalls' first-printing code
- This title is a documented exception to the house's own practice: Quill & Brush record that the "I" appears here WITHOUT any accompanying "First published" statement, so the bare "I" is the point, and an otherwise identical copy lacking it is a later printing
- Binding is blue-green cloth stamped in gilt on the spine, with a dark yellow top stain
- The first-issue jacket (designed by Grace James) bears on the rear panel a photograph of Cheever with cigarette and ashtray against a curtain backdrop, with "Funk & Wagnalls New York 10" across the bottom, and carries no review blurbs; price present at the front flap
- Ahearn APG 002a
- Cheever's second book; fourteen stories, all first published in The New Yorker
- Publisher imprint reads Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | John Cheever |
| Publisher | Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York |
| Year | 1953 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | The first printing is identified by the roman numeral "I" on the copyright page — Funk & Wagnalls' first-printing code |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
The first printing is identified by the roman numeral "I" on the copyright page — Funk & Wagnalls' first-printing code. This title is a documented exception to the house's own practice: Quill & Brush record that the "I" appears here WITHOUT any accompanying "First published" statement, so the bare "I" is the point, and an otherwise identical copy lacking it is a later printing. Binding is blue-green cloth stamped in gilt on the spine, with a dark yellow top stain. The first-issue jacket (designed by Grace James) bears on the rear panel a photograph of Cheever with cigarette and ashtray against a curtain backdrop, with "Funk & Wagnalls New York 10" across the bottom, and carries no review blurbs; price present at the front flap. Ahearn APG 002a. Cheever's second book; fourteen stories, all first published in The New Yorker.

## Is this the true first?
US Funk & Wagnalls, New York, 1953 is the sole true first; the sources consulted record no contemporary UK edition, so no UK-vs-US precedence question arises. The imprint is itself the trap — Funk & Wagnalls was a reference-book house and this is an outlier in Cheever's run (Random House for The Way Some People Live, 1943; Harper for The Wapshot Chronicle, 1957), which is why the book is routinely misdescribed. First-thus trap: these stories are reprinted in The Stories of John Cheever (Knopf, 1978), a collected edition and not a first.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club tell for this title is documented in the sources consulted. Generic era tells apply — club issues lack the top stain, carry a blindstamp at the rear board, and have no price at the jacket flap — but the decisive check remains the roman numeral "I" on the copyright page.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Enormous Radio and Other Stories* by John Cheever a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-enormous-radio-and-other-stories
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.