Wessex Poems and Other Verses

UK precedes US, despite a shared imprint that invites error. Harper & Brothers ran both a London and a New York house and the title pages name both cities, so the imprint alone will not separate the editions. The London edition dated 1898, limited to 500 copies, is the true first. The first American edition is dated 1899, bound in light green cloth with pictorial decoration in colours, and followed roughly six weeks after the London book from New York (Purdy p. 106); the number of American copies is not recorded. The title-page date — 1898 against 1899 — is the working discriminator. This was Hardy's first collection of verse and marks his turn from fiction to poetry; his novels are separately collected and share none of these points.