# Is "The Loney" by Andrew Michael Hurley a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley (Tartarus Press, Coverdale, 2014) is identified by: Published 1 October 2014 by Tartarus Press in its standard house format: a sewn hardback of 278 pages, printed lithographically, with silk ribbon marker, head and tailbands, decorated boards and a dust jacket. The Tartarus Press hardback (Coverdale, 1 October 2014) is the true first and the census claim is confirmed.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Published 1 October 2014 by Tartarus Press in its standard house format: a sewn hardback of 278 pages, printed lithographically, with silk ribbon marker, head and tailbands, decorated boards and a dust jacket
- Each copy is signed by the author on the title page; the copies are unnumbered, so there is no limitation statement giving a copy number to check
- The publisher and multiple dealer descriptions state a limitation of 300 signed copies; some secondary reference works give 350 instead, and that figure is not supported by the publisher's own account, so 300 should be treated as the documented number
- Beware the recurring cataloguing error in which the 278-page count is transcribed as a copy count
- Publisher imprint reads Tartarus Press, Coverdale
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Andrew Michael Hurley |
| Publisher | Tartarus Press, Coverdale |
| Year | 2014 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Published 1 October 2014 by Tartarus Press in its standard house format: a sewn hardback of 278 pages, printed lithographically, with silk… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Published 1 October 2014 by Tartarus Press in its standard house format: a sewn hardback of 278 pages, printed lithographically, with silk ribbon marker, head and tailbands, decorated boards and a dust jacket. Each copy is signed by the author on the title page; the copies are unnumbered, so there is no limitation statement giving a copy number to check. The publisher and multiple dealer descriptions state a limitation of 300 signed copies; some secondary reference works give 350 instead, and that figure is not supported by the publisher's own account, so 300 should be treated as the documented number. Beware the recurring cataloguing error in which the 278-page count is transcribed as a copy count.

## Is this the true first?
The Tartarus Press hardback (Coverdale, 1 October 2014) is the true first and the census claim is confirmed. The common state — and the copy nearly everyone means when they say "first edition of The Loney" — is the John Murray (London) trade edition of 2015, which followed the Costa First Novel Award attention and is a first thus, not the first. This is a textbook small-press-precedence trap: the John Murray printing is the widely distributed book, the Tartarus is the true first, and the two look nothing alike. No US edition precedes either; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's American edition follows the John Murray.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club edition of the Tartarus issue is documented, and none would be expected of a signed small-press limitation. The reprint tells run the other way: the 2015 John Murray trade edition and subsequent paperback issues are frequently listed as "first edition" on the strength of a John Murray number line, which identifies only the first printing of the trade edition. A Tartarus copy is identified by the publisher's imprint, the 2014 date, the signature on the title page and the house binding specification; anything carrying a John Murray or Hodder imprint is a later edition regardless of what its number line says.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Loney* by Andrew Michael Hurley a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-loney
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.