Little Fur Family

US-only true first: Harper & Brothers, New York, autumn 1946 — the census claim is correct. No simultaneous or prior British edition surfaced; the book is collected as an American first. The famous point here is one of issue and survival rather than edition: only the 1946 printing carries genuine New Zealand rabbit fur (Brown insisted on it), the printing ran to roughly 50,000 copies, and moths got into Harper's warehouse and destroyed a large part of it — which is why intact fur-bound copies in the die-cut box are the fragile rarity the census flags, and why Harper switched to imitation fur and larger formats afterwards. Every subsequent Harper & Brothers, Harper & Row and HarperCollins reissue is 'first thus' at best.