The Red Pony

Census claim confirmed: Covici-Friede, New York, 1937 is the true first separate edition, in the signed limitation of 699. It is US-only — there is no UK edition of the 1937 issue and no original-language question, so no precedence contest arises. The familiar Viking illustrated Red Pony (New York, 1945), with eleven Wesley Dennis watercolors and a fourth story, is a classic 'first thus' trap, not a first: 'The Leader of the People' had already made its first book appearance in The Long Valley (Viking, September 1938). The three stories in the Covici-Friede volume had appeared earlier in periodicals (North American Review, Harper's) between 1933 and 1937, so the 1937 book is first in book form only.