Father Goose: His Book

US-only origination, and the census claim is correct: Geo. M. Hill Co., Chicago (and New York), 1899 is the true first. No UK or other-language edition precedes it, and no British trade edition of 1899 is documented in the sources consulted. This is the Baum–Denslow collaboration that immediately precedes and financed the look of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from the same publisher, so it is collected as an Oz-adjacent first in its own right, not as a "first thus" of anything earlier.