June 15, 1952

The Diary of a Young Girl

First U.S. Edition of Anne Frank's Diary Is Published in English

The 15 June date belongs to a newspaper review. Doubleday had put the book in American shops three days earlier, on what would have been Anne Frank's twenty-third birthday.

A publication date chosen for a birthday

Doubleday & Company published the first U.S. edition of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl in Garden City, New York, on 12 June 1952 — Anne Frank's birthday, not 15 June.

The edition ran to 285 pages, used Barbara Mooyaart-Doubleday's English translation, and carried a foreword credited to Eleanor Roosevelt.

Anne Frank had died in Bergen-Belsen in 1945. The text came from her father Otto, who compiled it from her original diary, her rewritten version and several short stories.

Where 15 June comes from

On 15 June, Meyer Levin's enthusiastic review appeared in The New York Times Book Review. That review date is the probable source of the erroneous publication date.

There is a second date that has a better claim on "first English-language publication": Vallentine Mitchell released the British edition on 30 April 1952.

Neither was the diary's first appearance anywhere — the Dutch Het Achterhuis had been published in 1947.

5,000, then 15,000, then 45,000

Doubleday's first American printing was a modest 5,000 copies. After Levin's review, sales accelerated and the publisher ordered a second printing of 15,000 and a third of 45,000.

Eleanor Roosevelt's name introduced the book to American readers, though archival evidence leaves open how much of the foreword she personally drafted.

Doubleday's June release was the American edition specifically; the British and American publications were separate events six weeks apart.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 6 sources not yet audited Date corrected

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →

Date corrected. The research places this at 1952-06-12.

What the sources leave uncertain

June 15 is not supported as the publication date; it was the date of Meyer Levin's New York Times Book Review article.
If the intended event is the first English-language publication anywhere, the correct date is April 30, 1952, when Vallentine Mitchell released the British edition. June 12 is the correct date for the first U.S. edition.