The Mystery of Edwin Drood

The census gets the story right but the precedence wrong: it lists the true first as the 1870 Chapman & Hall book. It is not. The true first is the six parts in original wrappers, April - September 1870, published before and during Dickens's death on 9 June 1870; the one-volume Chapman and Hall book edition of 1870 collects the fragment afterward and is the first edition in book form, a separate and later thing. Both are collected, the parts decisively the more desirable. Dickens completed roughly the end of Part VI of twelve projected parts, so the novel breaks off unfinished - the wrappered parts are all that was published.