An Essay on the Principle of Population

No UK/US or original-language question: Malthus wrote in English and the 1798 Johnson octavo is the true first. The census claim on publisher, city, year and anonymity is confirmed. The edition that trips buyers is the 1803 quarto (London: printed by T. Bensley for J. Johnson), which is the second edition and the first to bear Malthus's name on the title page; it runs roughly four times the length of the 1798 and is routinely described as practically a new book rather than a revision, Malthus himself conceding in the preface that he had taken too gloomy a view in the first. Any title page dated 1798 bearing 'T.R. Malthus' as author is therefore not the first edition. Because the 1803 is a distinct work in substance, collections that want the argument in both its polemical and its mature form treat the 1798 octavo and the 1803 quarto as two books, not two states of one. The census's characterisation of the 1803 as the 'attainable form' is a market judgement, not a bibliographical point, and has been dropped.