# Is "Miss Julie (Fröken Julie)" by August Strindberg a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Miss Julie (Fröken Julie) by August Strindberg (Jos. Seligmanns Förlag, Stockholm, 1888) is identified by: Published in book form in the week of 23-29 November 1888. The Swedish original is the true first: Stockholm, Jos.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Published in book form in the week of 23-29 November 1888
- Title page reads: 'Froken Julie / Ett naturalistiskt sorgespel / af / August Strindberg / Med ett foerord af foerfattaren / STOCKHOLM / JOS. SELIGMANNS FOERLAG' — the naturalist subtitle and the author's preface are both present in the first edition and are part of the issue
- Collates [xxiv] + (2 ff., 2 blanks) + 84 pp.; issued in printed wrappers, and surviving copies are commonly rebound with the front wrapper preserved
- Recorded as Zetterlund I:40 in the standard Strindberg bibliography
- The decisive textual point runs against the usual expectation: this first edition prints Seligmann's BOWDLERIZED text, not Strindberg's
- Strindberg had offered the play to Karl Otto Bonnier (letter of 10 August 1888)
- Publisher imprint reads Jos. Seligmanns Förlag, Stockholm

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | August Strindberg |
| Publisher | Jos. Seligmanns Förlag, Stockholm |
| Year | 1888 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Poetry |
| Key point | Published in book form in the week of 23-29 November 1888 |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Published in book form in the week of 23-29 November 1888. Title page reads: 'Froken Julie / Ett naturalistiskt sorgespel / af / August Strindberg / Med ett foerord af foerfattaren / STOCKHOLM / JOS. SELIGMANNS FOERLAG' — the naturalist subtitle and the author's preface are both present in the first edition and are part of the issue. Collates [xxiv] + (2 ff., 2 blanks) + 84 pp.; issued in printed wrappers, and surviving copies are commonly rebound with the front wrapper preserved. Recorded as Zetterlund I:40 in the standard Strindberg bibliography. The decisive textual point runs against the usual expectation: this first edition prints Seligmann's BOWDLERIZED text, not Strindberg's. Strindberg had offered the play to Karl Otto Bonnier (letter of 10 August 1888); Bonnier's firm declined it as too risky and too naturalistic, and Seligmann agreed to publish only on condition of cuts — roughly 330 alterations were introduced across the preface and the dramatic text, including the softening of Jean's blunt retort, a reading that then stood for nearly a century. The 1888 first edition therefore does NOT contain the uncensored play. Any copy whose text carries Strindberg's restored readings is by definition not the 1888 first: the uncensored text is a modern scholarly reconstruction, recovered only after the manuscript became accessible to scholars in 1936 and established by Gunnar Ollen in 1984 using infrared illumination and stereomicroscopy to separate Strindberg's brownish ink from Seligmann's black.

## Is this the true first?
The Swedish original is the true first: Stockholm, Jos. Seligmanns Foerlag, 1888. Strindberg wrote in Swedish and no English edition is remotely contemporary, so there is no UK-vs-US question here; the first foreign appearance is the Danish translation by Nathalia Larsen, published in the week of 14-21 February 1889. English translations follow decades later and are never the first edition of the work — anything catalogued as a 'first edition' of Miss Julie in English is at most a first edition in English. A related first-thus trap: because the 1888 text was censored, the texts in general circulation descend from later restorations (the manuscript became accessible to scholars in 1936; Harry Bergholz attempted a reconstruction in 1954; Gunnar Ollen's 1984 edition is the closest to Strindberg's intended printer's text). Those restored texts are first-thus appearances of a reconstructed text, not editions of record.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club apparatus exists for an 1888 Stockholm imprint. The reprint tells are textual rather than physical: every modern Swedish edition and the 1984 Nationalupplagan restored text are 'first thus,' and the presence of the uncensored readings is itself proof that a copy is not the 1888 first. A Kiepenheuer-style later-thousand statement does not apply here; check instead for the Seligmann imprint, the author's preface, and the 84-page text block.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Miss Julie (Fröken Julie)* by August Strindberg a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/miss-julie-fr-ken-julie
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.