Full Title:

Title page recto: THE | CERTAIN HOUR | [in italic] (Dizain des Poëtes) | By | JAMES BRANCH CABELL | "Criticism, whatever may be its pretensions, never | does more than to define the impression which | is made upon it at a certain moment by a work | wherein the writer himself noted the impression | of the world which he received at a certain hour." | NEW YORK | ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY | 1929 (see image above).

Title page verso: Copyright, 1916, by Robert M. McBride & Co. | Copyright, 1915, by McBride, Nast & Co. | Copyright 1914, by the Sewanee Review Quarterly | Copyright, 1913, by John Adams Thayer Corporation | Copyright, 1912, by Argonaut Publishing Company | Copyright, 1911, by Red Book Corporation | Copyright, 1909, by Harper and Brothers | [rule] | [in italic] Printed in United States of America | [rule] | FOURTH EDITION (see image above).

Publication:

New York: Robert M. McBride & Co., 1929

Collation:

xx

Binding:

Kalki binding: red-brown cloth; gilt lettering and decorations; top edge trimmed, else untrimmed. Spine: THE | CERTAIN | HOUR | [rule] | CABELL | McBRIDE. (see image above).

Dedication:

TO | ROBERT GAMBLE CABELL II | [in italic] In Dedication of The Certain Hour | sixteen line dedicatory verse in four quatrains (see image above).

Notes:

The quotation on the title page is by Jules Lemaître, quoted in French Maxims of Letters, translated and edited by Henri Pène du Bois, published by Bretanos, New York, 1894.

When this edition was issued in 1920, Mr. Cabell added a passage on page (8) that purported to be an excerpt from The Terrible and Marvellous History of Manuel Pig-Tender That Afterwards Was Named Manuel the Redeemer. This addition tied The Certain Hour to The Biography of Manuel by identifying the protagonists of these stories with the ten clay figures that Manuel created in Figures of Earth, and which were brought to life by Freydis, once the High Queen the Audela, "each in his certain hour" (see image above).

In the latter half of the 1920s, for no clear reason*, some printings in McBride's Kalki series were issued in bindings that lacked the “Kalki logo” in the lower right corner of the front board. In other ways – size, trim, cloth and the characteristic brick-brown color – they were the same as the standard Kalki bindings which did bear the logo. The generally meticulous Hall makes no mention of logo-less Kalki bindings – perhaps he just never happened to encounter any, though that would be surprising since such bindings for five different titles have come our way without our seeking them.

Kalki bindings sans logo:
*Chiv-B3a (K) – Chivalry (1926), 3rd printing
*CoV-C5a (K) – The Cords of Vanity (1927), 5th printing
Riv-A8 (K) – The Rivet in Grandfather’s Neck (1928), 8th printing
CH-A4 (K) – The Certain Hour (1929), 4th printing
*CoJ-A9(K) – The Cream of the Jest (1930), 9th printing

The 1926 third Kalki printing of Chivalry, the 1927 fifth Kalki printing of The Cords of Vanity, and the 1930 ninth printing of The Cream of the Jest exist in both states, with and without logo. Therefore we have designated the logo-less issues as binding variants and assigned them new ‘Hall numbers’: *Chiv-B3a (K), *CoV-B5a (K), and *CoJ-A9a (K). The other titles lacking the logo will retain the regular Hall number for their printing until or unless we can verify the existence a copy from that printing bearing the logo.

It is clear that this was not a series-wide policy after 1925, as the new publications of The Silver Stallion (1926) and Something About Eve (1927), as well as reprints of (for instance) Gallantry (1927), Jurgen (1928), and Beyond Life (1930) do display the Kalki logo in the accustomed place.
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*We can speculate. Perhaps McBride used several different binderies but possessed a limited number of Kalki ‘stamps’ for impressing the logo. Certain later reprints were assigned to the stamp-less bindery and no one thought it worth the trouble to bring a stamp over from another bindery. It is notable that each of the five logo-less printings represents the final Kalki issue for that title.