# Is "The Mansion" by William Faulkner a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Mansion by William Faulkner (Random House, New York, 1959) is identified by: The trade first printing states "First Printing" on the copyright page. US Random House, New York, 1959 is the true first of this text — the closing volume of the Snopes trilogy, after The Hamlet (1940) and The Town (1957).

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The trade first printing states "First Printing" on the copyright page
- Bound in blue (variously described as blue-green or teal) coarsely woven cloth, the upper cover and spine ruled in grey and lettered in gold, with a yellow top stain and blue endpapers
- 8vo, [12], 436 pp
- The first-state pictorial jacket carries the publisher's code "10/59" at the foot of the front flap, the price present at the flap, no review quotations, and Ralph R. Thompson's photograph of Faulkner on the back panel
- Petersen A52.2b
- Man Working 141
- Publisher imprint reads Random House, New York

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | William Faulkner |
| Publisher | Random House, New York |
| Year | 1959 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | The trade first printing states "First Printing" on the copyright page |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
The trade first printing states "First Printing" on the copyright page. Bound in blue (variously described as blue-green or teal) coarsely woven cloth, the upper cover and spine ruled in grey and lettered in gold, with a yellow top stain and blue endpapers; 8vo, [12], 436 pp. The first-state pictorial jacket carries the publisher's code "10/59" at the foot of the front flap, the price present at the flap, no review quotations, and Ralph R. Thompson's photograph of Faulkner on the back panel. Petersen A52.2b; Man Working 141; Burgess 99. A signed limited issue of 500 numbered copies was also published in 1959, bound in black cloth over bevelled boards stamped in gilt with a blue top stain and dark blue endpapers, signed by Faulkner on the limitation leaf and issued without a printed jacket — a plain glassine or acetate wrapper only, so a limited copy "lacking the dust jacket" is not defective.

## Is this the true first?
US Random House, New York, 1959 is the true first of this text — the closing volume of the Snopes trilogy, after The Hamlet (1940) and The Town (1957). The first English edition followed from Chatto & Windus (London) in 1961, two years later, in red cloth lettered in gilt and set to 399 pp.; it has no precedence claim and is collected only as the first English edition. Within the Random House publication two issues are collected: the 500-copy signed limited and the trade first printing, the latter being the standard collector's copy in jacket. The census claim (US Random House 1959 first, UK Chatto & Windus 1961) is confirmed as stated.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No club binding specific to this title is documented in the sources consulted, so no club-specific tells are asserted here. The decisive tests remain the copyright-page "First Printing" line and the "10/59" code at the foot of the front flap — a jacket without the code, or a copyright page without the line, is not the trade first printing. The 500-copy signed limited is a publisher's issue rather than a reprint, and correctly carries no printed jacket.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Mansion* by William Faulkner a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-mansion
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.