# Is "The Skin of Our Teeth" by Thornton Wilder a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder (Harper & Brothers, New York, 1942) is identified by: 'FIRST EDITION' is stated on the copyright page of the first printing, with no later printing listed — Harper & Brothers had stated first editions since 1922, so absence of the statement rules a copy out. US only-first; the census claim is correct as to publisher, city and year.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- 'FIRST EDITION' is stated on the copyright page of the first printing, with no later printing listed — Harper & Brothers had stated first editions since 1922, so absence of the statement rules a copy out
- Harper additionally printed a small two-letter month-year code on the copyright page
- The month letters run A=January through M=December, skipping J (so K=October, L=November, M=December); the year letters recycle, with the cycle restarting at M=1937, which makes R the year letter for 1942
- A 1942-dated first printing therefore carries a code ending in -R. The specific month letter for this title is not documented in any source consulted, so read the code as corroboration of the FIRST EDITION statement, not as the primary point — but a 1942-dated title page over a code ending in anything other than -R is a warning
- Collation: 3 preliminary leaves + 142 pp
- Bound in brick-red cloth with a paper spine label and a paper front-cover label — both labels must be present
- Publisher imprint reads Harper & Brothers, New York

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Thornton Wilder |
| Publisher | Harper & Brothers, New York |
| Year | 1942 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Poetry |
| Key point | 'FIRST EDITION' is stated on the copyright page of the first printing, with no later printing listed — Harper & Brothers had stated first… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
'FIRST EDITION' is stated on the copyright page of the first printing, with no later printing listed — Harper & Brothers had stated first editions since 1922, so absence of the statement rules a copy out. Harper additionally printed a small two-letter month-year code on the copyright page. The month letters run A=January through M=December, skipping J (so K=October, L=November, M=December); the year letters recycle, with the cycle restarting at M=1937, which makes R the year letter for 1942. A 1942-dated first printing therefore carries a code ending in -R. The specific month letter for this title is not documented in any source consulted, so read the code as corroboration of the FIRST EDITION statement, not as the primary point — but a 1942-dated title page over a code ending in anything other than -R is a warning. Collation: 3 preliminary leaves + 142 pp. Bound in brick-red cloth with a paper spine label and a paper front-cover label — both labels must be present. Jacket: the first-issue jacket is reported to make no mention of the Pulitzer Prize, and to be priced at the flap. That Pulitzer point comes from a single dealer and is not independently corroborated; treat the converse as the reliable half of it — the Pulitzer was awarded in May 1943, so any jacket touting the prize is necessarily later than the first-issue jacket.

## Is this the true first?
US only-first; the census claim is correct as to publisher, city and year. Harper & Brothers, New York, 1942 is the true first, and no UK edition preceding it is recorded in the sources consulted, so no UK-vs-US precedence question arises. One pre-publication artifact exists and cuts the other way as a trap: producer Michael Myerberg's mimeographed production script — 'The Skin of Our Teeth: Play in Three Acts', 1942, brad-bound mimeographed leaves printed rectos only in blue wrappers, the three acts paginated separately (39, 41 and 31 pp.), Myerberg named as publisher on front wrapper and title page. It is a theatrical working document, not a published edition, and OCLC locates only two institutional copies (NYPL and the Morgan, with further copies among Wilder's papers at Yale). It neither is the first edition nor is it a reprint of one; describe it for what it is.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club printing is documented for the 1942 Harper. Later-printing tells: any Harper copyright page listing a printing beyond the first, absence of the FIRST EDITION statement, or a code letter other than -R beneath a 1942-dated title page. The reprints that get mistaken for firsts are 'first thus': the Samuel French acting editions (1944/1945, reset and repaginated at c. 146 pp.) and the Harper 'Three Plays' (1957), which reprints the play with a new preface by Wilder — the preface is new to that volume, which is exactly what makes it first thus and not first.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Skin of Our Teeth* by Thornton Wilder a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-skin-of-our-teeth
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.