Boy (1984)

The Jonathan Cape, London, 1984 edition (ISBN 0224029851) is the first; Farrar, Straus and Giroux published the American edition in New York the same year. The Cape book is an octavo of 160 pages illustrated with photographs and drawings, bound in blue cloth or boards with gilt spine lettering and photographic collage endpapers. Quentin Blake illustrated the dust jacket, and the price of £6.50 net is printed on the front flap, so a clipped jacket loses that evidence. Check the copyright page for a later impression; dealers do offer second impressions. Not firsts: the FSG trade edition; the FSG signed limited issue of 200 numbered copies in brown cloth and slipcase without a jacket; the Penguin paperback of 1986 and later Puffin editions; the 1986 Heinemann Educational school edition; and the combined Boy and Going Solo published by Cape in 1992.