Private Lives

No book-club issue of Private Lives is documented in the sources consulted, but Doubleday, Doran was itself a major book-club printer in this period, so American copies should be checked for club tells — blind-stamp to the rear board, absent jacket price, cheaper bulking paper — before a trade first is claimed. The heavy "first thus" traffic is in later acting and collected editions: Samuel French acting editions, the 1965 Delta/Dell edition with an introduction by Edward Albee, the 1979 Grove Press issue (which states "First Edition Thus" while being a ninth printing), the 1971 Doubleday reissue, and the 1999 Random House collections pairing the play with Blithe Spirit and Hay Fever. None of these is a first edition.