The Once and Future King

UK first: Collins (London), first published April 1958, which precedes the first American edition, G. P. Putnam's Sons (New York), published 25 August 1958 — so UK precedence is confirmed, not assumed. The Putnam is bound in blue cloth with the spine lettered in gilt and is collected as the first American edition and the first US collected edition; both the Collins and the Putnam are collected. The first-thus trap runs in both directions: the constituent novels appeared separately between 1938 and 1940 (The Sword in the Stone, 1938; The Witch in the Wood, 1939; The Ill-Made Knight, 1940) and their texts are revised here, so The Once and Future King is the first edition of the tetralogy and of The Candle in the Wind, but not of the three earlier titles. The Book of Merlyn (University of Texas Press, 1977) is a separate posthumous fifth volume, not part of this edition.