Raintree County

US Houghton Mifflin (Boston) 1948 is the true first, and the census claim is confirmed. The book was published on January 5, 1948; Lockridge died by suicide on March 6, 1948, roughly two months later, at 33 — the single lifetime edition follows from that. The precedence problem on this title is not UK-vs-US but trade-vs-club: Raintree County was the Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection, chosen before publication, and the club issue was produced concurrently from the same setting, so trade firsts and club copies circulate side by side and must be separated on the physical points above. The first printing was a very large one (reported at 50,000 copies), so a surviving trade first is not a rarity. No UK edition was corroborated in the sources consulted and none is described here.