# Is "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen" by Alan Garner a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner (Collins, 1960) is identified by: William Collins, Sons & Co., London, 1960 — Garner's first book, subtitled 'A Tale of Alderley', 224 pages, printed by the Collins Clear-Type Press. Collins, London, 1960 is the true first, and this is firmly confirmed.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- William Collins, Sons & Co., London, 1960 — Garner's first book, subtitled 'A Tale of Alderley', 224 pages, printed by the Collins Clear-Type Press
- First-edition copies are bound in blue cloth with the spine stamped in silver and have pictorial map endpapers; the endpaper maps and the pictorial dust jacket are the work of George Adamson
- Look for the price present at the front flap (unclipped) and a copyright page free of any later-impression statement
- The most substantive point is textual rather than physical: the 1960 sheets carry Garner's ORIGINAL text
- He revised the novel for the 1963 reprint — cutting extraneous clauses, adjectives and adverbs, altering hyphenation, and deleting whole passages (the final paragraph of Chapter 1 is gone in the revised text) — so every copy from 1963 onward carries the second text
- The 1960 first edition is the only first-edition appearance of the first text
- Publisher imprint reads Collins

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Alan Garner |
| Publisher | Collins |
| Year | 1960 |
| True first | American edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | William Collins, Sons & Co., London, 1960 — Garner's first book, subtitled 'A Tale of Alderley', 224 pages, printed by the Collins… |
| Book-club edition exists? | Yes |

## Points of issue
William Collins, Sons & Co., London, 1960 — Garner's first book, subtitled 'A Tale of Alderley', 224 pages, printed by the Collins Clear-Type Press. First-edition copies are bound in blue cloth with the spine stamped in silver and have pictorial map endpapers; the endpaper maps and the pictorial dust jacket are the work of George Adamson. Look for the price present at the front flap (unclipped) and a copyright page free of any later-impression statement. The most substantive point is textual rather than physical: the 1960 sheets carry Garner's ORIGINAL text. He revised the novel for the 1963 reprint — cutting extraneous clauses, adjectives and adverbs, altering hyphenation, and deleting whole passages (the final paragraph of Chapter 1 is gone in the revised text) — so every copy from 1963 onward carries the second text. The 1960 first edition is the only first-edition appearance of the first text.

## Is this the true first?
Collins, London, 1960 is the true first, and this is firmly confirmed. The census claim about the American edition is WRONG and is corrected here: no Franklin Watts 1961 US edition appears in any source consulted, including Open Library's holdings for the title. The first American edition is Henry Z. Walck, Inc., New York, 1969 — nine years after the British first, as one specialist children's-book dealer states outright ('issued 9 years before it was published in the US'). The Walck 1969 is the US collecting point; it is a distant second to the Collins and is not a rival for precedence.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
Later Collins impressions, the 1963 revised-text reprint, the Puffin and Armada Lion paperbacks (the 1971 US paperback reverted to the 1960 text), the Fontana and Collins Voyager reissues, the Odyssey Classics / Magic Carpet / Turtleback US reprints, and the HarperCollins 2010 fiftieth-anniversary edition with Garner's new preface are all reprints or 'first thus.' Sagebrush rebounds and library rebinds are common and destroy the binding points. No 1960 book-club issue is documented in the sources consulted.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Weirdstone of Brisingamen* by Alan Garner a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-weirdstone-of-brisingamen
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.