Memoirs of Samuel Pepys (the Diary, first publication)

No language or UK/US precedence question arises: Pepys wrote in English shorthand and the 1825 Colburn quarto is the first publication anywhere. The census claim is confirmed, with the abridgement point worth stating precisely. John Smith deciphered the shorthand between 1819 and 1822; Braybrooke's 1825 text prints only about half of Smith's transcript, and what it does print is abridged and expurgated. The first complete and unexpurgated text is Robert Latham and William Matthews, eds., "The Diary of Samuel Pepys: A New and Complete Transcription," London: Bell (later Bell & Hyman) / Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970-83, in eleven volumes — nine of text, plus the Companion and the Index. The 1825 accordingly remains the antiquarian collectible and the 1970-83 Latham & Matthews is the textual first, and serious Pepys collections hold both for different reasons.