Under the Greenwood Tree

Census claim CONFIRMED as to the true first, with one correction to its US attribution: Tinsley Brothers, London, 1872 is the true first, Hardy's second novel and his first Wessex novel. The first American edition appeared in 1873 from Holt & Williams, New York — not 'Holt' simpliciter, though that firm shortly became Henry Holt & Co. — in the publisher's cream cloth decorated in black; it was in fact the first Hardy novel published in the United States, his debut having waited until 1874 there. It follows the Tinsley by a year, so there is no precedence contest and only the Tinsley two-volume set is the collected first.