# Is "Three Lives" by Gertrude Stein a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Three Lives by Gertrude Stein (The Grafton Press, 1909) is identified by: First edition, first issue: The Grafton Press, New York, 1909, 279 pp. US Grafton Press, New York, 1909 is the true first and the only edition to collect as such; the census claim is confirmed on precedence but its framing of the 1915 John Lane as a 'UK edition' is misleading and is corrected here.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition, first issue: The Grafton Press, New York, 1909, 279 pp
- Stein paid for the printing herself — Grafton was a subsidy/vanity house — and 1,000 copies were printed
- Bound in publisher's dark blue to blue-black vertically-ribbed cloth, titling in gilt on the front cover and the spine; issued without a dust jacket, so a jacketed copy dated 1909 warrants close scrutiny
- Standard reference is Wilson A1a (Robert A. Wilson, Gertrude Stein: A Bibliography, 1994)
- The identification rests on the Grafton Press title leaf being integral and original — not a cancel — because the sheets of this same printing were later re-used for the British issue
- Publisher imprint reads The Grafton Press
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Gertrude Stein |
| Publisher | The Grafton Press |
| Year | 1909 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | First edition, first issue: The Grafton Press, New York, 1909, 279 pp |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
First edition, first issue: The Grafton Press, New York, 1909, 279 pp. Stein paid for the printing herself — Grafton was a subsidy/vanity house — and 1,000 copies were printed. Bound in publisher's dark blue to blue-black vertically-ribbed cloth, titling in gilt on the front cover and the spine; issued without a dust jacket, so a jacketed copy dated 1909 warrants close scrutiny. Standard reference is Wilson A1a (Robert A. Wilson, Gertrude Stein: A Bibliography, 1994). The identification rests on the Grafton Press title leaf being integral and original — not a cancel — because the sheets of this same printing were later re-used for the British issue.

## Is this the true first?
US Grafton Press, New York, 1909 is the true first and the only edition to collect as such; the census claim is confirmed on precedence but its framing of the 1915 John Lane as a 'UK edition' is misleading and is corrected here. Roughly 700 copies went to the American market; about 300 sets of the same unsold 1909 Grafton sheets were made up for John Lane in London in 1915 with a cancel title leaf, retaining the Grafton binding and the Grafton imprint at the foot of the spine. The 1915 British issue is therefore a re-issue of American first-edition sheets, not a separate edition or a true second edition.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue is documented for the 1909 Grafton printing. The later editions are the traps and are all 'first thus': John Lane, London and New York, 1920; John Rodker, London, 1927; and the New Directions issue of 1933 onward. Per Le Bookiniste (citing Wilson A1e), copies in dust jacket are effectively unobtainable before the 1927 Rodker issue — a useful negative check on any jacketed copy claimed as early.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Three Lives* by Gertrude Stein a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/three-lives
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.