Walden; or, Life in the Woods

US Ticknor and Fields, Boston, 1854 is the true first, and because only one printing of 2,000 copies was made, every genuine 1854-imprint copy is first edition/first printing. The inserted rear ad catalogues are dated variously (April 1854 through September 1855) and do NOT establish priority — a later ad date does not make a copy 'later,' and using the ad date as a first-issue test is a common error. Later Ticknor and Fields / Fields, Osgood / Houghton, Mifflin issues from the 1860s onward are reprints from new settings. The 1854 first is genuinely scarce.