Look, Stranger!

UK first, and both editions are collected under their different titles — the census claim is confirmed in full. Faber issued the book in London in 1936 as Look, Stranger!, a title chosen by the publisher while Auden was in Iceland and unreachable, and which he disliked ("It sounds like the work of a vegetarian lady novelist"); he had proposed Thirty-One Poems. The American edition followed from Random House, New York, 1937, under Auden's own preferred title On This Island — Bloomfield & Mendelson A13b — in brown boards lettered in gilt on the front panel and spine, octavo, 68 pages. Same thirty-one poems, same Prologue/Epilogue structure; the two are the same book under two titles, with the London 1936 Faber issue holding priority. Collectors who want the author-sanctioned title need the New York 1937 book, which does not displace the UK first.