# Is "The Tiger Who Came to Tea" by Judith Kerr a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr (Collins, 1968) is identified by: First edition, first impression: Collins, London, 1968. UK true first confirmed: William Collins, Sons & Co., London, 1968 — the census claim stands.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition, first impression: Collins, London, 1968
- 4to (about 260 x 190 mm), colour illustrations throughout, issued in publisher's matt pictorial paper boards — boards, not cloth — with the pictorial dust jacket, the jacket being the scarce element and frequently absent
- The identification is not settled by the copyright page: Collins printed no impression line and later printings simply repeat the 1968 copyright date, so three external dating checks carry the work
- (a) The jacket flap price must be pre-decimal, in shillings; a decimalised price means February 1971 or later
- (b) The Collins address on the title page should show the 'SW1' postcode form, which predates the SW1A introduction completed by 1974
- (c) There should be no ISBN — 10-digit ISBNs came in from 1970, so the presence of an ISBN rules out a 1968 impression
- Publisher imprint reads Collins

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Judith Kerr |
| Publisher | Collins |
| Year | 1968 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Children's / illustrated |
| Key point | First edition, first impression: Collins, London, 1968 |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
First edition, first impression: Collins, London, 1968. 4to (about 260 x 190 mm), colour illustrations throughout, issued in publisher's matt pictorial paper boards — boards, not cloth — with the pictorial dust jacket, the jacket being the scarce element and frequently absent. The identification is not settled by the copyright page: Collins printed no impression line and later printings simply repeat the 1968 copyright date, so three external dating checks carry the work. (a) The jacket flap price must be pre-decimal, in shillings; a decimalised price means February 1971 or later. (b) The Collins address on the title page should show the 'SW1' postcode form, which predates the SW1A introduction completed by 1974. (c) There should be no ISBN — 10-digit ISBNs came in from 1970, so the presence of an ISBN rules out a 1968 impression. A copyright page dated 1968 on its own establishes nothing.

## Is this the true first?
UK true first confirmed: William Collins, Sons & Co., London, 1968 — the census claim stands. This was Kerr's first book. A first American edition followed from Coward-McCann, New York, in 1968 per catalogue records; the Collins hardback has precedence and is the collected edition, and the US issue is not a co-precedent. The Collins paperback of 1969 and all later Picture Lions / HarperCollins issues are first-thus only, not printings of the first edition. English is the original language.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue is documented in the sources consulted. The standard misidentification is the early-1970s impression, which shows the same 1968 copyright page but a decimalised jacket price and a 10-digit ISBN; PBFA dealers place that as the second impression of about 1971 and it is routinely offered as a first. Jacketless copies forfeit the price check and must be worked on the ISBN and title-page-address points alone. Any copy with an ISBN, however 1968 its copyright line reads, is a later impression.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Tiger Who Came to Tea* by Judith Kerr a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-tiger-who-came-to-tea
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.