# Is "The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith, 1929) is identified by: CONFIRMED: 1,789 copies first printing (Daniel; multiple ABAA dealers). US Cape & Smith is the true first; the UK Chatto & Windus edition is later.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- CONFIRMED: 1,789 copies first printing (Daniel; multiple ABAA dealers)
- True first is US Cape and Smith 1929, published Oct 7 1929
- UK Chatto and Windus 1931 is later
- No additional-printing notice is consistent
- WRONG BINDING: not black cloth with paper spine label; it is patterned Art Deco paper-covered boards with a white cloth spine, title stamped in black on the spine with no paper label, dark blue-gray topstain, patterned endpapers
- WRONG JACKET: not glassine; it is a printed pictorial jacket with a Kathe Kollwitz design; the real point of issue is the rear-panel Humanity Uprooted listing at 3.the printed price first state versus 3.the printed price second state
- Publisher imprint reads Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | William Faulkner |
| Publisher | Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith |
| Year | 1929 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | CONFIRMED: 1,789 copies first printing (Daniel; multiple ABAA dealers) |
| Book-club edition exists? | Yes |

## Points of issue
CONFIRMED: 1,789 copies first printing (Daniel; multiple ABAA dealers). True first is US Cape and Smith 1929, published Oct 7 1929; UK Chatto and Windus 1931 is later. No additional-printing notice is consistent. WRONG BINDING: not black cloth with paper spine label; it is patterned Art Deco paper-covered boards with a white cloth spine, title stamped in black on the spine with no paper label, dark blue-gray topstain, patterned endpapers. WRONG JACKET: not glassine; it is a printed pictorial jacket with a Kathe Kollwitz design; the real point of issue is the rear-panel Humanity Uprooted listing at 3.the printed price first state versus 3.the printed price second state. The jacket is genuinely scarce. PARTLY MISLEADING COLORED INK: it is true the 1929 text has no colored ink and Faulkner wished for colored type for the Benjy time-shifts, but this is not a point of issue since all early printings are monochrome, and it was later realized in the 2012 Folio Society edition; reword unrealized to unrealized in his lifetime.

## Is this the true first?
US Cape & Smith is the true first; the UK Chatto & Windus edition is later. Earliest Faulkner firsts are defined by the Cape & Smith imprint and first-state binding.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
Grosset & Dunlap and later reprints carry their own imprints; no book-club edition matches the Cape & Smith first-printing binding and label.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Sound and the Fury* by William Faulkner a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-sound-and-the-fury
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.