The Federalist: A Collection of Essays

There is no UK/US or original-language precedence question: the essays were written for New York newspapers and the McLean two-volume set of 1788 is the first book appearance and the true first edition. The census claim is correct on publisher, city and year. The immediate trap is the 1799 'second edition' (New York: printed and sold by John Tiebout): it is not a new printing at all but the unsold McLean sheets reissued under a cancel title page dated 1799, so the text block is identical to the 1788 first — collate the sheets, not the title page. Two later editions matter for textual precedence rather than for priority of printing: George F. Hopkins (New York, 1802), the last published in Hamilton's lifetime, whose title page still reads 'By Publius' — Hamilton refused per-essay attribution, so the three authors are named only in the front matter — and Jacob Gideon (Washington, 1818), the first edition to carry Madison's corrections and to assign each essay to its author. The census framing of the Hopkins and Gideon editions as the 'realistic collectibles' is a market judgement, not a bibliographical point, and has been dropped.