# Is "The Street" by Ann Petry a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Street by Ann Petry (Houghton Mifflin, 1946) is identified by: The first printing carries the date "1946" in Arabic numerals on the title page — Houghton Mifflin's near-invariable practice of the period was to date the title page of first printings and to remove that date on subsequent printings, so a copy without the title-page date is not the first printing. The true first is the US edition: Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1946 — Petry's first novel.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The first printing carries the date "1946" in Arabic numerals on the title page — Houghton Mifflin's near-invariable practice of the period was to date the title page of first printings and to remove that date on subsequent printings, so a copy without the title-page date is not the first printing
- Bound in publisher's pictorial cloth with a stamped Harlem street scene on both the front and rear boards and lettering in black
- Dealers describe the cloth shade inconsistently (greenish-tan, light grey, blue-grey) because the cloth tones and fades readily — shade is not a printing point, but the stamped street-scene pictorial boards are constant
- The jacket carries the author's photograph and biography on the rear panel; a priced jacket with the price present at the flap is the unclipped first-issue state
- Houghton Mifflin did not add a routine "first printing" line to the copyright page until the late 1950s, so no such statement should be expected here
- Publisher imprint reads Houghton Mifflin
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Ann Petry |
| Publisher | Houghton Mifflin |
| Year | 1946 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | The first printing carries the date "1946" in Arabic numerals on the title page — Houghton Mifflin's near-invariable practice of the period… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
The first printing carries the date "1946" in Arabic numerals on the title page — Houghton Mifflin's near-invariable practice of the period was to date the title page of first printings and to remove that date on subsequent printings, so a copy without the title-page date is not the first printing. Bound in publisher's pictorial cloth with a stamped Harlem street scene on both the front and rear boards and lettering in black; 436 pp. Dealers describe the cloth shade inconsistently (greenish-tan, light grey, blue-grey) because the cloth tones and fades readily — shade is not a printing point, but the stamped street-scene pictorial boards are constant. The jacket carries the author's photograph and biography on the rear panel; a priced jacket with the price present at the flap is the unclipped first-issue state. Houghton Mifflin did not add a routine "first printing" line to the copyright page until the late 1950s, so no such statement should be expected here.

## Is this the true first?
The true first is the US edition: Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1946 — Petry's first novel. The first English edition is Michael Joseph, London, 1947; both are collected, but the Houghton Mifflin has clear precedence. Note the trap: a 1947 World Publishing Company (Cleveland) reprint states "First Printing February 1947" on its copyright page and is regularly catalogued as a "first edition" — it is a first thus only, not the true first.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue is documented in the sources consulted. The operative reprint tell is the negative one: absence of the 1946 date on the title page. The separately dated World Publishing 1947 printing (blue cloth, black illustration and spine lettering) is the reprint most often misdescribed as a first.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Street* by Ann Petry a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-street
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.