The Crack-Up

US-only precedence: New Directions, New York, 1945, edited by Edmund Wilson, is the true first and the sole edition collected as such — the census claim is correct. No British edition preceded or competed with it; UK hardcover publication followed more than a decade later (The Bodley Head, reported 1958), and that later British issue is a reprint, not a co-first. The 'first thus' traps are the New Directions paperbook (NDP54) and modern annotated reissues.