# Is "The Knave of Hearts (text by Louise Saunders)" by Maxfield Parrish a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Knave of Hearts (text by Louise Saunders) by Maxfield Parrish (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925) is identified by: The true first edition is the 1925 Charles Scribner's Sons issue, a large royal quarto (approx. Precedence: the 1925 Charles Scribner's Sons black-cloth royal quarto is the true first edition, first printing.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The true first edition is the 1925 Charles Scribner's Sons issue, a large royal quarto (approx
- 13 the printed price x 11 the printed price in / 352 x 292 mm) bound in publisher's black cloth with a full-size mounted color pictorial label (Parrish's cover painting) laid onto the front board, and color-pictorial (illustrated) endpapers
- Dealer consensus (Bauman, and multiple ABAA sellers) describes the color content as 14 full-page color plates plus 9 in-text color vignettes (about 23 printed color images), drawn from the 26 Parrish paintings executed for the book -- 26 is the figure cited by Parrish biographer Coy Ludwig for the total number of paintings, so it counts artworks, not discrete printed plates
- Plates are printed in rich color on heavy coated paper
- Complete copies were housed in a glassine wrapper inside a publisher's box; the glassine and box are almost always absent, and their presence is a strong completeness point
- Identification only, no values
- Publisher imprint reads Charles Scribner's Sons

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Maxfield Parrish |
| Publisher | Charles Scribner's Sons |
| Year | 1925 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Children's / illustrated |
| Key point | The true first edition is the 1925 Charles Scribner's Sons issue, a large royal quarto (approx |
| Book-club edition exists? | Yes |

## Points of issue
The true first edition is the 1925 Charles Scribner's Sons issue, a large royal quarto (approx. 13 the printed price x 11 the printed price in / 352 x 292 mm) bound in publisher's black cloth with a full-size mounted color pictorial label (Parrish's cover painting) laid onto the front board, and color-pictorial (illustrated) endpapers. Dealer consensus (Bauman, and multiple ABAA sellers) describes the color content as 14 full-page color plates plus 9 in-text color vignettes (about 23 printed color images), drawn from the 26 Parrish paintings executed for the book -- 26 is the figure cited by Parrish biographer Coy Ludwig for the total number of paintings, so it counts artworks, not discrete printed plates. Plates are printed in rich color on heavy coated paper. Complete copies were housed in a glassine wrapper inside a publisher's box; the glassine and box are almost always absent, and their presence is a strong completeness point. Identification only, no values.

## Is this the true first?
Precedence: the 1925 Charles Scribner's Sons black-cloth royal quarto is the true first edition, first printing. Unusually for a golden-age gift-book illustrator, Scribner did NOT issue a separate signed/numbered deluxe or large-paper limited state -- the prized first is simply the ordinary 1925 trade edition, made scarce by its fragile mounted cover label, glassine, and box rather than by a limitation. There is no UK-first complication: this is a US-originated title with Scribner as sole first publisher. Louise Saunders (wife of Scribner editor Maxwell Perkins, and Parrish's Cornish, NH neighbor) is the text author; the book is collected for Parrish as illustrator.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
Chief trap: the spiral / wire-comb-bound softcover version in color pictorial wrappers (issued by the Artists and Writers Guild, the predecessor to Little Golden Books) is a LATER reprint, NOT the 1925 Scribner first. It carries only the "Copyright 1925 by Charles Scribner's Sons" line, so it is routinely misdated 1925, but it was actually issued roughly a decade later (mid-1930s); sources disagree on the imprint location (Racine, WI is commonly cited, but at least one source places it in Poughkeepsie, NY), so treat the location as uncertain. Genuine firsts are the oversized black-cloth hardcover with the full-size mounted color cover label and pictorial endpapers; later reprints (including the softcover and modern facsimile-style printings) typically show reduced plate quality and lack the mounted label, glassine, and box. No book-club issue of note. Because there is no limited edition, any copy described as a "signed limited" is either an owner-signed trade copy or misdescribed.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Knave of Hearts (text by Louise Saunders)* by Maxfield Parrish a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-knave-of-hearts
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.