# Is "The Night Land" by William Hope Hodgson a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson (Eveleigh Nash, London, 1912) is identified by: [i-vi] vii [viii] ix [x] 11-583 [584: printer's imprint]. Census claim CONFIRMED.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Octavo; pp. [i-vi] vii [viii] ix [x] 11-583 [584: printer's imprint]. No statement of printing on the copyright page — the 1912 Nash sheets are identified by title leaf and collation alone
- Issued both with and without a 16-page undated publisher's catalogue bound in at the rear; no priority is established between the two states, so the absence of the catalogue does not disqualify a copy
- Publisher's cloth is recorded in more than one color: ABAA dealers catalogue red cloth and peach/orange cloth examples, in each case with the front panel stamped in gold and ruled in blind, spine panel stamped in gold, rear panel ruled in blind
- No priority has been established among the cloth colors
- Currey records a black-cloth copy as a presentation binding presumed special for the author rather than the trade state
- The dust jacket is almost never encountered — dealer copies are routinely offered without it — so no jacket points are reliably documented and none are asserted here
- Publisher imprint reads Eveleigh Nash, London

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | William Hope Hodgson |
| Publisher | Eveleigh Nash, London |
| Year | 1912 |
| True first | American edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Octavo; pp. [i-vi] vii [viii] ix [x] 11-583 [584: printer's imprint]. No statement of printing on the copyright page — the 1912 Nash sheets… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Octavo; pp. [i-vi] vii [viii] ix [x] 11-583 [584: printer's imprint]. No statement of printing on the copyright page — the 1912 Nash sheets are identified by title leaf and collation alone. Issued both with and without a 16-page undated publisher's catalogue bound in at the rear; no priority is established between the two states, so the absence of the catalogue does not disqualify a copy. Publisher's cloth is recorded in more than one color: ABAA dealers catalogue red cloth and peach/orange cloth examples, in each case with the front panel stamped in gold and ruled in blind, spine panel stamped in gold, rear panel ruled in blind. No priority has been established among the cloth colors. Currey records a black-cloth copy as a presentation binding presumed special for the author rather than the trade state. The dust jacket is almost never encountered — dealer copies are routinely offered without it — so no jacket points are reliably documented and none are asserted here.

## Is this the true first?
Census claim CONFIRMED. Eveleigh Nash (London, 1912) is the true first and the only edition published in Hodgson's lifetime (d. 1918); no contemporaneous American edition exists, so there is no UK/US precedence contest. The first US book appearance is posthumous and came inside the Arkham House omnibus 'The House on the Borderland and Other Novels' (Sauk City, 1946, 3,014 copies, Hannes Bok jacket, with an introduction by H. C. Koenig and bibliography by A. Langley Searles). The first separate US hardcover is Hyperion Press (Westport, 1976), explicitly described as a reprint of the Nash edition. Both American issues are 'first thus' traps, not the first edition.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No contemporary book-club issue is documented. Reprint tells: the Arkham House 1946 omnibus carries its own title leaf and gathers four novels; the Hyperion Press 1976 reprint is bound in green boards with silver stamping and was issued without a jacket as issued. Any copy carrying the text but not the Eveleigh Nash 1912 title leaf and the 583-page collation is a reprint.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Night Land* by William Hope Hodgson a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-night-land
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.