Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses

UK precedes US. Methuen & Co. (London), 1892, is the true first for both the trade and large-paper issues, and the sources consulted do not establish precedence between those two issues, so neither should be described as preceding the other. American printings dated 1892 follow the Methuen: the Macmillan Company (New York) issue is recorded as the first authorized American edition, and unauthorized American printings circulated as well — Carrie Kipling wrote of one American edition that it 'was the first one authorized by him in America but there were many others published earlier without his authority', so an 1892 American imprint is neither the true first nor necessarily an authorized one. The sharper trap is a first-thus: the 1893 'Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads' is a different, expanded book adding further poems (the Kipling Society records four), and the 'Departmental Ditties and Barrack-Room Ballads' volumes are different compilations again. Only a volume titled exactly 'Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses' bearing the Methuen 1892 imprint is this book.