The Woman in Black

UK precedes US, and the census note is correct on precedence. The true first is Hamish Hamilton, London, 1983. The first American edition is David R. Godine, Boston, 1986 — stated 'First American Edition,' retaining John Lawrence's black-and-white pen-and-ink drawings, 160 pp., in a jacket priced at the flap. Both are collected and the Godine is genuinely scarce, but it is a first American edition, not the first edition, and should be described that way. Later illustrated, anniversary and post-2012-film reissues are 'first thus' at best.