The Hunger

The census claim stands: the true first is the US edition, William Morrow and Company, New York, 1981. The first UK edition is The Bodley Head, London, 1981 (ISBN 0-370-30398-9), bound in black cloth/boards with silver spine lettering; its copyright page reads "First published in Great Britain in 1981," a formula that itself signals prior publication abroad and therefore confirms US precedence rather than a shared-year tie. Both editions are collected, but the Morrow is the first. One AbeBooks listing dates the Bodley Head to 1980; that is contradicted by Open Library, by other dealer copies, and by the "First published in Great Britain in 1981" statement, and is treated here as a listing error. Later Corgi (1983) and Pocket/Simon & Schuster paperbacks are reprints, and the Deneuve/Bowie cover state is a 1983 film tie-in — a "first thus" trap, not a first edition.