The Return of the King

UK Allen & Unwin is the true first. Many dealer descriptions still call the signature-'4'-with-slipped-type variant the 'first state', following Hammond & Anderson's original 1993 Descriptive Bibliography sequence (which assumed printers would have corrected the damage). Hammond reversed that priority in The Tolkien Collector, issue 11 (October 1995): the undamaged page 49 without the '4' is now accepted as the earliest state, and the '4'-plus-damage as the latest. Dealer state-numbering is inconsistent (the '4' variant is variously called '2nd' or '3rd state'), but all these states are genuine first impressions.