The Rats

UK precedence: the NEL London 1974 hardback precedes the NEL paperback of the same year. ABA/ILAB/PBFA dealers catalogue the two states separately and explicitly — the hardback as the 'true first printing' and the 1974 paperback as the 'first paperback edition' — and review/reference sources likewise record NEL as having published the first edition in hardback. Both 1974 states are collected, but only the hardback is the first edition. No US hardcover of the period is documented in the sources consulted; the American appearance was a Signet/New American Library mass-market paperback, a later state and not the first.