# Is "The Triumph of Achilles" by Louise Glück a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Triumph of Achilles by Louise Glück (The Ecco Press, New York, 1985) is identified by: The first edition is The Ecco Press, New York, 1985 — Glück's fourth collection, twenty-six poems in three sections, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and of the Poetry Society of America's Melville Kane Award. A US book with no competing edition: the Ecco Press New York 1985 printing is the true first, and no contemporaneous UK edition is recorded in any source consulted — note that the census assertion of "US only" was not independently confirmed and is reported, not vouched for.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The first edition is The Ecco Press, New York, 1985 — Glück's fourth collection, twenty-six poems in three sections, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and of the Poetry Society of America's Melville Kane Award
- Binding is the identifying feature and is consistently described by independent dealers: cloth-backed, paper-covered boards, with a pale grey (variously "grey") cloth backstrip and brick-red paper-covered boards (also described as "red," "light red," and "plum"), spine titles stamped in gilt, and the author's initials embossed into the front cover
- Pagination 60 pages, collating [xii], [2], 3-60
- Issued in a priced dust jacket — price present at the flap, so a price-clipped jacket loses that point
- Some copies carry a publisher's printed sticker noting the Melville Kane Award
- Uncorrected proofs exist in original printed blue paper wrappers and should not be confused with a trade wrappers issue
- Publisher imprint reads The Ecco Press, New York

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Louise Glück |
| Publisher | The Ecco Press, New York |
| Year | 1985 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Poetry |
| Key point | The first edition is The Ecco Press, New York, 1985 — Glück's fourth collection, twenty-six poems in three sections, winner of the National… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
The first edition is The Ecco Press, New York, 1985 — Glück's fourth collection, twenty-six poems in three sections, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and of the Poetry Society of America's Melville Kane Award. Binding is the identifying feature and is consistently described by independent dealers: cloth-backed, paper-covered boards, with a pale grey (variously "grey") cloth backstrip and brick-red paper-covered boards (also described as "red," "light red," and "plum"), spine titles stamped in gilt, and the author's initials embossed into the front cover. Octavo. Pagination 60 pages, collating [xii], [2], 3-60. Issued in a priced dust jacket — price present at the flap, so a price-clipped jacket loses that point. Some copies carry a publisher's printed sticker noting the Melville Kane Award. Uncorrected proofs exist in original printed blue paper wrappers and should not be confused with a trade wrappers issue. HONEST GAP, stated deliberately: no bibliography or dealer record consulted quotes the Ecco copyright page, so it cannot be confirmed here whether the first printing is identified by a stated "First Edition," by a number line, or by neither. The one publisher-identification list found asserting an Ecco practice could not be corroborated against a second list (Quill & Brush and ILAB carry no Ecco entry at all), so it is not repeated. Identify this book by the 1985 Ecco imprint and the binding above; treat any copyright-page claim as unverified until a copy is examined.

## Is this the true first?
A US book with no competing edition: the Ecco Press New York 1985 printing is the true first, and no contemporaneous UK edition is recorded in any source consulted — note that the census assertion of "US only" was not independently confirmed and is reported, not vouched for. No original-language question arises; Glück wrote in English. The "first thus" traps are downstream: the poems were later gathered into Glück's collected and selected volumes (and the collection was reissued by Ecco/HarperCollins), and none of those are printings of the 1985 book.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club edition is documented — poetry collections of this scale rarely received one, and no dealer record consulted describes one. The genuine reprint tell is the paperback: no dealer consulted describes a simultaneous 1985 wrappers issue, and the paperback carries a separate ISBN (0-88001-082-7) against the 1985 hardcover's 0-88001-081-9, with the paperback recorded as the later issue. The 2020 Nobel Prize drove a wave of reissues and reprints, so any copy acquired after 2020 warrants extra scrutiny; check the imprint and binding against the description above rather than trusting a jacket or a bookseller's "first edition" note.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Triumph of Achilles* by Louise Glück a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-triumph-of-achilles
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.