- Picador copyright pages carry a printer's number line, and the lowest number shows the impression: a first impression keeps the 1, while a line ending at 11, for example, is an eleventh printing.
- Pan Macmillan's own collecting guidance gives the same rule: a 1 anywhere in the number line usually marks a first printing, and a line without it is a later printing.
Publisher · founded 1972 · London
Picador
Picador is the Pan Macmillan literary imprint founded by Sonny Mehta in 1972 as a paperback series, issuing hardbacks since 1990 and publishing The Road in the UK.
- Editions tracked
- 268
- First editions
- 62
- Books
- 262
- Years
- 1973 to 2025
Picador is a publisher based in London, founded in 1972. We track 268 editions it published between 1973 and 2025, 62 of them first editions across 262 books. How Picador marked its first editions is set out below, with a checker for the year on your title page.
About Picador
Picador is a literary imprint of Pan Macmillan, launched in London in 1972 by Sonny Mehta as a paperback series of Pan Books for international writing, and later the British publisher of Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Douglas Stuart's Booker-winning Shuggie Bain.
Mehta joined Pan in 1972 and shaped Picador into a distinct literary list, publishing Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes, Bret Easton Ellis and Michael Herr. Pan itself, founded by Alan Bott in 1944, had been owned by a consortium of publishers including Macmillan and Collins, and became wholly owned by Macmillan in 1987, which is why Picador now sits within Pan Macmillan.
Picador began issuing its own hardbacks in 1990, so its later books appear in both cloth and paperback. Its list covers fiction, non-fiction and poetry: UK authors include Carol Ann Duffy and Kae Tempest, and the wider Picador list includes Hanya Yanagihara, Colm Toibin and Don DeLillo, and commercial successes such as Jessie Burton's The Miniaturist and Adam Kay's This Is Going to Hurt. It published the first UK edition of The Road in 2006. A separate US Picador, part of Macmillan Publishing, stopped commissioning original titles from 2019 to concentrate on paperback reprints. Both belong to the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.
Holding a copy? The first edition checker shows Picador's practice for the year on your title page.
Identification
How to identify Picador first editions
Authors
Books
Published by Picador
Frequently asked questions
How do I identify a Picador first edition?
- Picador copyright pages carry a printer's number line, and the lowest number shows the impression: a first impression keeps the 1, while a line ending at 11, for example, is an eleventh printing. - Pan Macmillan's own collecting guidance gives the same rule: a 1 anywhere in the number line usually marks a first printing, and a line without it is a later printing.
How many Picador books does MyVolumes track?
We track 268 editions published by Picador, 62 of them first editions, across 262 books.
Where these facts come from
- Picador (imprint), Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
- Pan Books, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
- Sonny Mehta 1943-2019, Pan Macmillan (panmacmillan.com)
- How can I tell if my book is a first edition?, Pan Macmillan (panmacmillan.com)
- Flaubert's Parrot (Picador, 1985), Julian Barnes Bibliography (bibliography.julianbarnes.com)
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy, UK first, Existential Ennui, 2011 (existentialennui.com)
- The Road. First Edition (2006), Rare Books Ireland (rarebooks.ie)
Every fact on this page was checked against the sources listed. Checked 17 October 2026. Reviewed by Harriet Ellis; read how we check facts.