# Is "The Four Just Men" by Edgar Wallace a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Four Just Men by Edgar Wallace (The Tallis Press, 1905) is identified by: First edition, first impression: octavo, 224 pages, in original yellow cloth printed in black on the spine and upper board, the front board carrying the prize-competition reward notice. Sole true first: The Tallis Press, London, 1905 — the imprint Wallace created himself expressly to publish this book.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition, first impression: octavo, 224 pages, in original yellow cloth printed in black on the spine and upper board, the front board carrying the prize-competition reward notice
- Two internal points define a complete first impression: the folding illustrated frontispiece, and the numbered, perforated, detachable 'Solution Competition' entry slip bound in at the rear
- The slip is the point that matters — it was designed to be torn out and posted, so the overwhelming majority of surviving copies lack it entirely, or have it removed with a reader's solution laid or stapled in its place; dealers also report copies in which the slip was excised by the publisher once the competition closed
- One specialist dealer additionally reports later copies within the first impression carrying an inserted illustrated plate relating to the competition, which suggests in-run variants, but that has not been confirmed against a published bibliography
- Publisher imprint reads The Tallis Press
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Edgar Wallace |
| Publisher | The Tallis Press |
| Year | 1905 |
| True first | American edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | First edition, first impression: octavo, 224 pages, in original yellow cloth printed in black on the spine and upper board, the front board… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
First edition, first impression: octavo, 224 pages, in original yellow cloth printed in black on the spine and upper board, the front board carrying the prize-competition reward notice. Two internal points define a complete first impression: the folding illustrated frontispiece, and the numbered, perforated, detachable 'Solution Competition' entry slip bound in at the rear. The slip is the point that matters — it was designed to be torn out and posted, so the overwhelming majority of surviving copies lack it entirely, or have it removed with a reader's solution laid or stapled in its place; dealers also report copies in which the slip was excised by the publisher once the competition closed. One specialist dealer additionally reports later copies within the first impression carrying an inserted illustrated plate relating to the competition, which suggests in-run variants, but that has not been confirmed against a published bibliography.

## Is this the true first?
Sole true first: The Tallis Press, London, 1905 — the imprint Wallace created himself expressly to publish this book. There is no competing first-edition claimant in another country or language; no American edition appeared until many years later. The 'first thus' trap is downstream of the book's history: the newspaper prize competition was drafted without a clause limiting payment to one winner per category, Wallace was obliged to pay every correct entrant, and in the resulting financial collapse he sold the rights outright to George Newnes. Every Newnes and later-publisher issue is a reprint, however early it looks.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue is documented for the 1905 Tallis Press printing. The standard reprint tells are the post-1905 Newnes issues published after Wallace sold the rights, all later trade reprints in the long-running Four Just Men series, and modern omnibus collections such as the Wordsworth 'Complete Four Just Men' — none of which carry the yellow Tallis cloth, the folding frontispiece or the competition slip.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Four Just Men* by Edgar Wallace a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-four-just-men
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.