Far from the Madding Crowd

The Smith, Elder two-volume edition is the first English book edition, but precedence over the American edition is genuinely contested rather than settled. Henry Holt issued a one-volume American edition essentially simultaneously; Purdy records that the American edition carries advertisements dated 17 November 1874 while the London edition was published about 23 November 1874, so the American issue may actually precede the English. Treat which printing is the true first as unresolved.