# Is "Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings" by Joel Chandler Harris a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings by Joel Chandler Harris (D. Appleton and Company, 1881) is identified by: The title page reads 'New York: D.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The title page reads 'New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1881,' though the book was actually placed on sale in November 1880, a common holiday-trade postdating practice
- BAL 7100 records the first state as carrying the compositor's error 'presumptive' (for 'presumptuous') on the last line of page 9, together with the absence of any mention of Uncle Remus itself among the publisher's advertisements at the rear; both points were corrected in the second and third states
- First-edition copies are bound in publisher's pictorial cloth with patterned grey (recorded variants include grey-green and grey-olive) butterfly-decorated endpapers; recorded cloth colors include brown and a scarcer yellow, with blue-gray the scarcest of all and most prone to fading, and no established priority among the colors
- Publisher imprint reads D. Appleton and Company
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Joel Chandler Harris |
| Publisher | D. Appleton and Company |
| Year | 1881 |
| True first | — |
| Format | Children's / illustrated |
| Key point | The title page reads 'New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1881,' though the book was actually placed on sale in November 1880, a common… |
| Book-club edition exists? | — |

## Points of issue
The title page reads 'New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1881,' though the book was actually placed on sale in November 1880, a common holiday-trade postdating practice. BAL 7100 records the first state as carrying the compositor's error 'presumptive' (for 'presumptuous') on the last line of page 9, together with the absence of any mention of Uncle Remus itself among the publisher's advertisements at the rear; both points were corrected in the second and third states. First-edition copies are bound in publisher's pictorial cloth with patterned grey (recorded variants include grey-green and grey-olive) butterfly-decorated endpapers; recorded cloth colors include brown and a scarcer yellow, with blue-gray the scarcest of all and most prone to fading, and no established priority among the colors.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
Second- and third-state sheets correct 'presumptive' to 'presumptuous' on page 9 and add advertisements for Uncle Remus itself to the rear pages.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings* by Joel Chandler Harris a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/uncle-remus-his-songs-and-his-sayings
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.