# Is "The Pisan Cantos" by Ezra Pound a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Pisan Cantos by Ezra Pound (New Directions, New York, 1948) is identified by: New Directions, New York, published 30 July 1948; Gallup A60a; Connolly, The Modern Movement, 100. US true first, confirmed against an academic bibliography and a dealer description independently: New Directions published in New York on 30 July 1948, ahead of the first UK edition from Faber & Faber, London, published 22 July 1949.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- New Directions, New York, published 30 July 1948
- Gallup A60a
- Connolly, The Modern Movement, 100
- 1,525 copies printed
- Binding is original fine-grained black cloth lettered in silver to the spine
- The dust jacket is buff paper lettered in green with an illustration of Pound in profile on the front panel; refer to it only as a priced jacket / price present at the flap
- Publisher imprint reads New Directions, New York

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Ezra Pound |
| Publisher | New Directions, New York |
| Year | 1948 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Poetry |
| Key point | New Directions, New York, published 30 July 1948 |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
New Directions, New York, published 30 July 1948; Gallup A60a; Connolly, The Modern Movement, 100. 1,525 copies printed. Binding is original fine-grained black cloth lettered in silver to the spine. The dust jacket is buff paper lettered in green with an illustration of Pound in profile on the front panel; refer to it only as a priced jacket / price present at the flap. Jacket state point, offered with a caveat: the first state is described as carrying the publisher's Fifth Avenue address, with the later state giving 333 Sixth Avenue at the foot of the rear panel, New Directions having moved in March 1949 — meaning a 1948 book in a Sixth Avenue jacket is a first printing in a later jacket. Among the sources consulted this address point rests on a single dealer (Between the Covers) and was not corroborated elsewhere, so treat it as indicative rather than settled; the binding, Gallup number, and 1,525-copy figure are corroborated independently.

## Is this the true first?
US true first, confirmed against an academic bibliography and a dealer description independently: New Directions published in New York on 30 July 1948, ahead of the first UK edition from Faber & Faber, London, published 22 July 1949. Both are collected — the Faber is the first English edition and a separate setting, not an import of the New Directions sheets. The census claim of US precedence is correct.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue is documented for this title. The reprint tells are later New Directions printings, the Sixth Avenue jacket state noted above, and the modern New Directions Paperbook edition (ISBN 9780811215589) edited and annotated by Richard Sieburth, which is a first thus and is the copy most often mistaken for the 1948 book on title alone. One correction of emphasis to the census note: The Pisan Cantos did win the inaugural Bollingen Prize, awarded by the Library of Congress by a jury including T. S. Eliot, but dealer descriptions split between calling it the 1948 and the 1949 prize because it was the award for 1948 made in February 1949 — the page should say 'inaugural Bollingen Prize (the 1948 award, announced February 1949)' rather than pick a year.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Pisan Cantos* by Ezra Pound a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-pisan-cantos
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.