The Circular Staircase

The standing trap is the Grosset & Dunlap (New York) reprint, issued by arrangement and retaining the Bobbs-Merrill copyright notice, which misleads buyers who read only the copyright line — the tell is the Grosset & Dunlap imprint on the title page, and some G&D issues carry a pictorial paste-down to the front cover after Lester Ralph. One recorded G&D issue is "by arrangement with Farrar & Rinehart, Inc.," a firm not founded until 1929, so that copy cannot predate 1929 whatever the copyright page says. Any copy lacking "September" with 1908 on the copyright page is a later printing.