# Is "The Troll Garden" by Willa Cather a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Troll Garden by Willa Cather (McClure, Phillips & Co., 1905) is identified by: Published May 1905, 253 pp., in original red cloth lettered in gilt with a blind-stamped design on the upper cover (the design initialed by William Jordan at lower left). The McClure, Phillips & Co., New York, 1905 edition is the true first and the census claim is confirmed.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Published May 1905, 253 pp., in original red cloth lettered in gilt with a blind-stamped design on the upper cover (the design initialed by William Jordan at lower left)
- The first issue is identified by the imprint "McClure, Phillips & Co." at the foot of the spine; copies reading "Doubleday, Page & Co." at the spine foot are the second issue
- Important trap: the leaf at pp
- 155-156, the section title for "The Marriage of Phaedra," is a cancel in ALL copies and is therefore NOT a point of issue, though it is sometimes offered as one
- Publisher imprint reads McClure, Phillips & Co.
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Willa Cather |
| Publisher | McClure, Phillips & Co. |
| Year | 1905 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Published May 1905, 253 pp., in original red cloth lettered in gilt with a blind-stamped design on the upper cover (the design initialed by… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Published May 1905, 253 pp., in original red cloth lettered in gilt with a blind-stamped design on the upper cover (the design initialed by William Jordan at lower left). The first issue is identified by the imprint "McClure, Phillips & Co." at the foot of the spine; copies reading "Doubleday, Page & Co." at the spine foot are the second issue. Important trap: the leaf at pp. 155-156, the section title for "The Marriage of Phaedra," is a cancel in ALL copies and is therefore NOT a point of issue, though it is sometimes offered as one.

## Is this the true first?
The McClure, Phillips & Co., New York, 1905 edition is the true first and the census claim is confirmed. No contemporaneous English edition is recorded among the sources consulted, so there is no UK-vs-US precedence question here. The census note that this is Cather's first fiction is correct and should not be loosened to "first book" — her first book was the 1903 poetry collection April Twilights; The Troll Garden is her second book and first book of fiction.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue exists (the title predates the American book clubs). The reprint/later-state tell is the binding: after McClure, Phillips dissolved in 1906 the remaining sheets were acquired by Doubleday and reissued in a new binding with the Doubleday imprint at the spine foot. Note the second-issue trap that these Doubleday-bound copies were supplied in an unchanged dust jacket still bearing the McClure, Phillips name, so the jacket alone does not establish first issue.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Troll Garden* by Willa Cather a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-troll-garden
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.