# Is "The Italian; or, The Confessional of the Black Penitents" by Ann Radcliffe a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Italian; or, The Confessional of the Black Penitents by Ann Radcliffe (T. Cadell Jun. & W. Davies, London, 1797) is identified by: Hand-press-era book: there is no edition statement, printing code or number line anywhere, so identification rests wholly on the imprint, the date and the collation. London, T.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Hand-press-era book: there is no edition statement, printing code or number line anywhere, so identification rests wholly on the imprint, the date and the collation
- The true first's title page gives the title and 'A Romance
- By Ann Radcliffe' with 'In three volumes,' the imprint 'Printed for T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies (Successors to Mr
- Cadell), in the Strand,' and the date 1797
- Radcliffe is named on the title page
- It must be complete in THREE volumes — the contemporaneous Dublin printing is set in TWO, which is the fastest discriminator
- Publisher imprint reads T. Cadell Jun. & W. Davies, London

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Ann Radcliffe |
| Publisher | T. Cadell Jun. & W. Davies, London |
| Year | 1797 |
| True first | American edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Hand-press-era book: there is no edition statement, printing code or number line anywhere, so identification rests wholly on the imprint… |
| Book-club edition exists? | Yes |

## Points of issue
Hand-press-era book: there is no edition statement, printing code or number line anywhere, so identification rests wholly on the imprint, the date and the collation. The true first's title page gives the title and 'A Romance. By Ann Radcliffe' with 'In three volumes,' the imprint 'Printed for T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies (Successors to Mr. Cadell), in the Strand,' and the date 1797; Radcliffe is named on the title page. It must be complete in THREE volumes — the contemporaneous Dublin printing is set in TWO, which is the fastest discriminator. No first-state textual errors, cancels or binding points are documented in any source consulted; half-titles are called for and are frequently absent in rebound sets, but no authority consulted establishes them as a point of issue. Be aware of a date discrepancy in the literature: the title pages read 1797, but a contemporary press notice (Staffordshire Advertiser, 17 December 1796) reports the three volumes 'published in London last Monday,' while some secondary accounts give June 1797 — the book carries an 1797 imprint either way.

## Is this the true first?
London, T. Cadell Jun. & W. Davies, 1797, in three volumes, is the true first and the only edition of collecting consequence; the census claim is confirmed. The census's flagged trap is also confirmed and now has a concrete discriminator: the 1797 Dublin edition was printed for P. Wogan, T. Stewart, P. Byrne, J. Exshaw, W. Porter and six other Dublin booksellers, and is set in TWO volumes rather than three — an Irish reprint issued under the era's lack of cross-channel copyright, not a state of the London first. No 1797 American edition was traced. There is no original-language question; Radcliffe wrote in English.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
Pre-dates book clubs entirely. The reprint hazards are the 1797 Dublin two-volume printing and the many nineteenth-century collected-Radcliffe and 'Novelist's Library' resettings, plus modern scholarly reprints (Oxford World's Classics, Penguin, Valancourt) that reproduce the 1797 text but are 'first thus' at best. Any copy dated after 1797, or collating as fewer than three volumes, is not the London first.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Italian; or, The Confessional of the Black Penitents* by Ann Radcliffe a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-italian-or-the-confessional-of-the-black-penitents
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.