Can Such Things Be?

The census claim is confirmed: the American Cassell edition of 1893 is the true first and the reference text; no British or foreign-language edition precedes it, and no early UK first is separately collected against it. The 1903 Neale Publishing 'new and authorized edition' is a substantially different book — Bierce's author's note complains that tales had been reprinted without his assent, and the 1903 contents overlap the 1893 collection only in a handful of the famous stories; it is a revised edition, not a first. The 1909-1912 Neale Collected Works scatters and rearranges the contents across volumes, which is why the 1893 Cassell state remains the reference.