Lost Horizon

Macmillan and Co., Limited, London, 1933 is the true first and the edition collectors prefer. William Morrow & Company, New York, 1933 is the first American edition — octavo, 277 pp., blind-stamped black boards with gilt lettering to the spine, identified by the 1933 date on the title and copyright pages with no additional printings noted (McBride is the standard reference for Morrow points). Both are collected, and fine Morrow copies are sought. Precedence should be stated with care: the two appeared in the same autumn, and at least one dealer account describes the arrangement as a simultaneous publication on 26 September 1933 rather than a London-then-New-York sequence. What is settled and can be published: the London Macmillan is the priority/preferred edition, and Morrow made small last-minute 'Americanizing' textual changes, so the two texts differ in minor but real respects.