The Leopard

Il Gattopardo (Feltrinelli, Milan, 1958) is the true first, published posthumously after both Mondadori and Einaudi had rejected the manuscript. Two English editions of 1960 are collected and both should be named: Collins and Harvill, London — recorded by the trade as the first edition in English — and Pantheon, New York, the first American. Both carry Colquhoun's translation and both are dated 1960; month-level precedence between them is not documented in the sources consulted, so on present evidence neither should be described as preceding the other. Separate "first thus" trap: Feltrinelli's December 1969 "edizione conforme al manoscritto del 1957" prints a different, corrected text from the 1958 Bassani-edited first, with a numbered leather issue following in December 1970 and a "ventennale" edition in 1978 — none of these is the first edition despite the manuscript-authority claim.