# Is "The Vegetable, or From President to Postman" by F. Scott Fitzgerald a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Vegetable, or From President to Postman by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1923) is identified by: The copyright page of the first printing reads "Published April, 1923" beneath the Scribner seal. A US-only true first: Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, April 1923.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The copyright page of the first printing reads "Published April, 1923" beneath the Scribner seal
- This is pre-1930 Scribner practice — the firm had not yet adopted the "A" device — so there is no edition statement and no number line to look for, and the dated publication line under the seal is the whole test
- Bound in dark green cloth, the spine lettered in gilt and the upper board lettered in blind, with fore- and bottom edges untrimmed
- 8vo (about 19.5 cm), [viii], 145, [1] pp. plus 2 pp. of advertisements; the title page carries Fitzgerald's epigraph beginning "Any man who doesn't want to get on in the world..."
- Published 27 April 1923 in a printing of 7,650 copies
- The pictorial jacket, illustrated by John Held, Jr., is very seldom present; the first-state jacket carries blurbs for The Beautiful and Damned and Tales of the Jazz Age on the front flap and advertisements for the fifth printing of Flappers and Philosophers and the thirteenth printing of This Side of Paradise on the rear flap
- Publisher imprint reads Charles Scribner's Sons, New York

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | F. Scott Fitzgerald |
| Publisher | Charles Scribner's Sons, New York |
| Year | 1923 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | The copyright page of the first printing reads "Published April, 1923" beneath the Scribner seal |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
The copyright page of the first printing reads "Published April, 1923" beneath the Scribner seal. This is pre-1930 Scribner practice — the firm had not yet adopted the "A" device — so there is no edition statement and no number line to look for, and the dated publication line under the seal is the whole test. Bound in dark green cloth, the spine lettered in gilt and the upper board lettered in blind, with fore- and bottom edges untrimmed; 8vo (about 19.5 cm), [viii], 145, [1] pp. plus 2 pp. of advertisements; the title page carries Fitzgerald's epigraph beginning "Any man who doesn't want to get on in the world...". Published 27 April 1923 in a printing of 7,650 copies. The pictorial jacket, illustrated by John Held, Jr., is very seldom present; the first-state jacket carries blurbs for The Beautiful and Damned and Tales of the Jazz Age on the front flap and advertisements for the fifth printing of Flappers and Philosophers and the thirteenth printing of This Side of Paradise on the rear flap. Bruccoli A10.1.a.

## Is this the true first?
A US-only true first: Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, April 1923. No contemporaneous British edition was published, so there is no UK/US precedence question — this is one of the few Fitzgerald 'A' items with a single claimant. It is Fitzgerald's only published play, and the book precedes the play's stage life (the Atlantic City tryout came in November 1923), so the book text is the first appearance. Modern reprints of the play are first thus and carry a different copyright page; the "Published April, 1923" line under the Scribner seal is the only first-printing test. The census claim (US-only first, Scribner's 1923) is confirmed as stated.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue is documented in the sources consulted — the play failed commercially and the sources record only the Scribner printing of 7,650 copies, though the Bruccoli "A10.1.a" designation formally leaves room for later printings the sources did not describe. The practical reprint tell is the absence of the "Published April, 1923" line under the Scribner seal on the copyright page. Because the jacket is so rarely present, an unjacketed copy is normal for this title and is not itself evidence against a first printing.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Vegetable, or From President to Postman* by F. Scott Fitzgerald a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-vegetable-or-from-president-to-postman
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.