Frankenstein

The 1818 three-volume first (anonymous, 500 copies, with Percy Shelley's preface and the Paradise Lost epigraph) is the true first. The 1823 second edition (2 volumes) is the first to name 'Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley' on the title page; the heavily revised 1831 one-volume Colburn & Bentley 'Standard Novels' edition supplies the now-standard text and Mary Shelley's new introduction but is a much later 'first thus'. The 1818 is one of the most celebrated of all literary first editions.