# Is "The Great Hunger" by Patrick Kavanagh a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Great Hunger by Patrick Kavanagh (The Cuala Press, Dublin, 1942) is identified by: True first in book form: The Cuala Press, Dublin, 1942, limited to 250 numbered copies — the numbered limitation/colophon leaf is the primary tell and no copy without it is the first. Irish-only original — there is no UK or US first edition.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- True first in book form: The Cuala Press, Dublin, 1942, limited to 250 numbered copies — the numbered limitation/colophon leaf is the primary tell and no copy without it is the first
- Set in Caslon and hand-printed by Esther Ryan and Máire Gill; pp
- 33, [3]; publisher's quarter linen over blue paper boards with the title printed on the front board
- Printed under wartime paper shortages: light fading and rubbing to the boards is normal for the issue and does not indicate a later state, as Cuala made no second printing
- Publisher imprint reads The Cuala Press, Dublin
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Patrick Kavanagh |
| Publisher | The Cuala Press, Dublin |
| Year | 1942 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Poetry |
| Key point | True first in book form: The Cuala Press, Dublin, 1942, limited to 250 numbered copies — the numbered limitation/colophon leaf is the… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
True first in book form: The Cuala Press, Dublin, 1942, limited to 250 numbered copies — the numbered limitation/colophon leaf is the primary tell and no copy without it is the first. Set in Caslon and hand-printed by Esther Ryan and Máire Gill; pp. 33, [3]; publisher's quarter linen over blue paper boards with the title printed on the front board. Printed under wartime paper shortages: light fading and rubbing to the boards is normal for the issue and does not indicate a later state, as Cuala made no second printing.

## Is this the true first?
Irish-only original — there is no UK or US first edition. Precedence trap: the poem's first appearance in print was in the London journal Horizon, January 1942, which carried parts I–III and an excerpt of part IV under the title 'The Old Peasant' (placed there on John Betjeman's recommendation). The Cuala Press issued the complete fourteen-part poem in April 1942; that is the first book edition and the first appearance of the full text. A periodical run of a partial text under a different title does not displace the Cuala book as the collected first.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club edition. The traps are later appearances of the text, none of them firsts: the poem was collected in A Soul for Sale (Macmillan, London, 1947), a 'first thus' trade appearance; and Irish University Press, Shannon, issued a 1971 facsimile of the Cuala Press edition — a facsimile reproduces the 1942 setting and can deceive at a glance, so confirm the numbered Cuala limitation leaf and the original quarter-linen and blue-board binding.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Great Hunger* by Patrick Kavanagh a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-great-hunger
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.