Scenes of Clerical Life

The Blackwood two-volume issue of 5 January 1858 (Edinburgh and London) is the true first edition in book form and the edition collected; the census claim is confirmed. Only the UK edition is a genuine first. Note that the Blackwood book is the first collected appearance rather than the first publication of the text: the three stories — "The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton", "Mr Gilfil's Love-Story" and "Janet's Repentance" — had already run anonymously in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine through 1857. A Harper & Brothers (New York) American edition followed in the same year, 1858, confirmed by the HathiTrust catalogue record (011602499) and by the Harvard copy digitised at the Internet Archive; it is a New York reprint of the London text and does not compete for precedence.