# Is "The Federalist: A Collection of Essays" by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Federalist: A Collection of Essays by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay (J. and A. McLean, New York, 1788) is identified by: New York: Printed and sold by J. There is no UK/US or original-language precedence question: the essays were written for New York newspapers and the McLean two-volume set of 1788 is the first book appearance and the true first edition.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- New York: Printed and sold by J. and A. M'Lean, no
- 41, Hanover-Square, M,DCC,LXXXVIII [1788]. Two volumes, duodecimo (12mo) — not octavo, which is a frequent cataloguing error; leaf size runs roughly 4.25 x 6.25 inches
- Volume I (essays 1-36) was published 22 March 1788 and collates vi, 227, [1] pp.; Volume II (essays 37-85, with the text of the Constitution printed at pp
- 367-384) followed on 28 May 1788 and collates vi, 384 pp
- The standard paging fault of the first edition, recorded in institutional catalogue records, is in Volume II: page 256 is misnumbered 156
- The book is anonymous — no authors' names appear on the title page and the essays stand over the pseudonym 'Publius.' About 500 copies were printed
- Publisher imprint reads J. and A. McLean, New York

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay |
| Publisher | J. and A. McLean, New York |
| Year | 1788 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | New York: Printed and sold by J. and A. M'Lean, no |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
New York: Printed and sold by J. and A. M'Lean, no. 41, Hanover-Square, M,DCC,LXXXVIII [1788]. Two volumes, duodecimo (12mo) — not octavo, which is a frequent cataloguing error; leaf size runs roughly 4.25 x 6.25 inches. Volume I (essays 1-36) was published 22 March 1788 and collates vi, 227, [1] pp.; Volume II (essays 37-85, with the text of the Constitution printed at pp. 367-384) followed on 28 May 1788 and collates vi, 384 pp. The standard paging fault of the first edition, recorded in institutional catalogue records, is in Volume II: page 256 is misnumbered 156. The book is anonymous — no authors' names appear on the title page and the essays stand over the pseudonym 'Publius.' About 500 copies were printed. Two paper states exist: a small number on superfine royal writing paper (thick-paper copies, generally understood as presentation copies) and the ordinary-paper copies; Volume II was printed on larger paper than Volume I. Expected dress is contemporary American sheep or calf with a morocco spine label. No number line, no edition statement, no printed price and no dust jacket apply to an imprint of this period. References: Evans 21127; Church 1230; Sabin 23979; Ford 17; Howes H114; Streeter Sale 1049; Grolier American 100; Printing and the Mind of Man 234.

## Is this the true first?
There is no UK/US or original-language precedence question: the essays were written for New York newspapers and the McLean two-volume set of 1788 is the first book appearance and the true first edition. The census claim is correct on publisher, city and year. The immediate trap is the 1799 'second edition' (New York: printed and sold by John Tiebout): it is not a new printing at all but the unsold McLean sheets reissued under a cancel title page dated 1799, so the text block is identical to the 1788 first — collate the sheets, not the title page. Two later editions matter for textual precedence rather than for priority of printing: George F. Hopkins (New York, 1802), the last published in Hamilton's lifetime, whose title page still reads 'By Publius' — Hamilton refused per-essay attribution, so the three authors are named only in the front matter — and Jacob Gideon (Washington, 1818), the first edition to carry Madison's corrections and to assign each essay to its author. The census framing of the Hopkins and Gideon editions as the 'realistic collectibles' is a market judgement, not a bibliographical point, and has been dropped.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue exists for an eighteenth-century imprint. The reprint and reissue tells that matter are: (1) the 1799 Tiebout reissue — original McLean sheets under a cancel title page, the single most common misidentification; (2) the nineteenth-century resettings (Hopkins 1802, Williams & Whiting 1810, Gideon 1818 and after), all of which announce themselves on the title page; and (3) modern two-volume facsimile reprints of the 1788 edition, including law-reprint-house issues, which reproduce the original title pages but betray themselves by machine-made paper, modern casing, a modern publisher's imprint elsewhere in the book, and an ISBN.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Federalist: A Collection of Essays* by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-federalist-a-collection-of-essays
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.