The Ballad of Reading Gaol

A London-only true first: Leonard Smithers, 1898, with no rival English-language edition claiming precedence and no original-language question, the work having been written in English. The census claim is confirmed in full, including the 800-copies-plus-30-on-Japanese-vellum limitation and the pseudonymous 'C.3.3.' issue. Smithers himself issued editions two through seven in rapid succession across 1898-99; the seventh, printed 23 June 1899, is the first to disclose the authorship, adding '[Oscar Wilde]' in square brackets below the C.3.3. — a landmark in the book's history but emphatically not the first edition.