# Is "The Sword in the Stone" by T. H. White a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Sword in the Stone by T. H. White (Collins, 1938) is identified by: The census claim holds: Collins, London, 1938 is the true first. UK first: Collins (London, 1938) — the true first and the text collectors want.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The census claim holds: Collins, London, 1938 is the true first
- First edition, first impression is bound in publisher's black cloth with the spine lettered in white — not gilt; descriptions citing gilt-stamped black cloth conflict with the ABAA and UK trade cataloguing and should be treated with caution
- Line-drawn chapter head- and tail-pieces are by T. H. White himself
- Collins printed its impression history on the copyright page, so the first impression carries the 1938 statement with nothing after it; any added impression line rules the copy out
- The pictorial dust jacket is scarce, commonly restored or repaired to the verso, and often supplied in facsimile — inspect the verso for repairs and the paper for reproduction
- An unclipped jacket retains the price at the flap
- Publisher imprint reads Collins

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | T. H. White |
| Publisher | Collins |
| Year | 1938 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | The census claim holds: Collins, London, 1938 is the true first |
| Book-club edition exists? | Yes |

## Points of issue
The census claim holds: Collins, London, 1938 is the true first. First edition, first impression is bound in publisher's black cloth with the spine lettered in white — not gilt; descriptions citing gilt-stamped black cloth conflict with the ABAA and UK trade cataloguing and should be treated with caution. Line-drawn chapter head- and tail-pieces are by T. H. White himself. Collins printed its impression history on the copyright page, so the first impression carries the 1938 statement with nothing after it; any added impression line rules the copy out. The pictorial dust jacket is scarce, commonly restored or repaired to the verso, and often supplied in facsimile — inspect the verso for repairs and the paper for reproduction. An unclipped jacket retains the price at the flap.

## Is this the true first?
UK first: Collins (London, 1938) — the true first and the text collectors want. The first US edition, G. P. Putnam's Sons (New York, 1939), is a substantively different book, not a reprint: Putnam required revisions and White rewrote accordingly, most conspicuously the Madam Mim chapter (softened for a young audience) and the Robin Hood sequence, and he replaced the Anthropophagi episode with Queen Morgan le Fay and her fairies. The Putnam is bound in blue cloth stamped in gilt, with illustrated endpapers by Robert Lawson, a red top-stain, and 310 pp. Both the Collins 1938 and the Putnam 1939 are collected — the second as the first American edition and as a distinct text. A third text exists and is the first-thus trap: the version of The Sword in the Stone inside The Once and Future King (Collins, 1958) is revised again — Madam Mim dropped, the ant and wild-goose episodes added — and is never the first edition of this title.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
Book-club issues struck from the Putnam 1939 sheets are common and are routinely catalogued by dealers as "1939 Putnam, Book Club Edition." The practical tell is the jacket: club copies appear in a jacket without price at the flap, and some carry no blind stamp on the rear board, so absence of a blind stamp alone does not clear a copy. Collins reprinted the 1938 text repeatedly in Britain; only the copyright-page impression statement separates those reprints from the first.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Sword in the Stone* by T. H. White a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-sword-in-the-stone
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.