The Tower Treasure (Hardy Boys #1)

US-only true first: Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1927 — the census claim is confirmed. The Tower Treasure was one of three "breeder" volumes issued simultaneously in 1927 (with The House on the Cliff and The Secret of the Old Mill), so no precedence exists among those three; there is no UK or foreign-language edition preceding 1927, and the pseudonymous "Franklin W. Dixon" is the Stratemeyer Syndicate house name for ghostwriter Leslie McFarlane. Because the format ran unchanged for years, the year on the title page alone establishes nothing — the points, not the date, govern.