# Is "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1911) is identified by: First edition, first printing: Frederick A. The census claim is upheld and can be dated, though 'narrowly' overstates it: the American Stokes edition was published in book form on 25 August 1911 and the English edition followed in October 1911 from William Heinemann, London - Stokes precedes by roughly two months, not by days.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition, first printing: Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York, published 25 August 1911
- The copyright page, verified against a scanned Stokes copy, reads 'Copyright, 1911, by Frances Hodgson Burnett / Copyright, 1910, 1911, by The Phillips Publishing Co.', followed by the all-rights-reserved notice ('including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian') and 'Printed in the United States of America'; there is no printing statement and no number line, so the point is the 1911 copyright with no additional printings listed
- The Stokes copy examined has an undated title-page imprint reading 'NEW YORK / FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY / PUBLISHERS', so identification rests on the copyright page and the binding rather than on a title-page year
- Collates [vi] + 375 pages
- Per BAL 2115A the first edition was issued simultaneously in two styles: Style A in blind-decorated blue cloth, top edge gilt, WITHOUT illustrations; and Style B in green cloth with a pictorial onlay of the girl in the garden covering most of the front board and gilt lettering to the spine, containing a colour frontispiece and three inserted colour plates by M. L. Kirk
- Neither style is a reprint of the other, and dealer descriptions citing 'four colour plates' are counting the frontispiece
- Publisher imprint reads Frederick A. Stokes Company

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Frances Hodgson Burnett |
| Publisher | Frederick A. Stokes Company |
| Year | 1911 |
| True first | American edition |
| Format | Children's / illustrated |
| Key point | First edition, first printing: Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York, published 25 August 1911 |
| Book-club edition exists? | Yes |

## Points of issue
First edition, first printing: Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York, published 25 August 1911. The copyright page, verified against a scanned Stokes copy, reads 'Copyright, 1911, by Frances Hodgson Burnett / Copyright, 1910, 1911, by The Phillips Publishing Co.', followed by the all-rights-reserved notice ('including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian') and 'Printed in the United States of America'; there is no printing statement and no number line, so the point is the 1911 copyright with no additional printings listed. The Stokes copy examined has an undated title-page imprint reading 'NEW YORK / FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY / PUBLISHERS', so identification rests on the copyright page and the binding rather than on a title-page year. Collates [vi] + 375 pages. Per BAL 2115A the first edition was issued simultaneously in two styles: Style A in blind-decorated blue cloth, top edge gilt, WITHOUT illustrations; and Style B in green cloth with a pictorial onlay of the girl in the garden covering most of the front board and gilt lettering to the spine, containing a colour frontispiece and three inserted colour plates by M. L. Kirk. Neither style is a reprint of the other, and dealer descriptions citing 'four colour plates' are counting the frontispiece.

## Is this the true first?
The census claim is upheld and can be dated, though 'narrowly' overstates it: the American Stokes edition was published in book form on 25 August 1911 and the English edition followed in October 1911 from William Heinemann, London - Stokes precedes by roughly two months, not by days. The Heinemann first English edition is separately collected and is the Charles Robinson book: publisher's green cloth lettered in gilt with a decorative flourish, octavo, 306 pages plus a publisher's catalogue, eight tissue-guarded colour plates, and a title page printed in red and black with a vignette. Both editions are collected and they are not interchangeable - different illustrators entirely. Prior appearance to note: the novel was serialised in ten issues of The American Magazine (published by the Phillips Publishing Co.) from November 1910 to August 1911, illustrated by J. Scott Williams; the Phillips copyright line on the Stokes copyright page is the trace of that serialisation.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
Stokes reprinted from the same setting for years, and Grosset & Dunlap and other reprint-house editions are common; because the first carries no printing statement, the reliable checks are the two-part Burnett/Phillips copyright notice with nothing added, and conformity to one of the two BAL binding styles. A green-cloth copy missing the pictorial onlay, the frontispiece or any of the three Kirk plates is defective rather than a distinct state, and a blue-cloth copy is correctly plateless (Style A) rather than incomplete. No book-club issue of the 1911 first is documented.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Secret Garden* by Frances Hodgson Burnett a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-secret-garden
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.