How first-publication dates are determined
A first-publication year records when a work was first issued to the public, which can differ from when it was written, serialised, translated or reprinted. authorrecord.org gives the year of first publication in the original language and puts serial runs, title-page dates and translation years in notes.
- The US Copyright Office defines publication as the distribution of copies of a work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease or lending.1
- Many nineteenth-century novels appeared first in instalments. Britannica dates War and Peace to 1865 to 1869 and Anna Karenina to 1875 to 1877, the years of their serial publication.2
- Reference works can disagree by a year when a book was issued late in one year with the next year on its title page. eNotes gives 1913 for Kafka's Betrachtung, while wissen.de gives 1912.3,4
- Some reference bibliographies list translation years rather than original years. The Nobel Prize bibliography for Naguib Mahfouz lists English editions, for example Palace Walk in 1989, while his Nobel biography dates the Cairo Trilogy to 1957.5,6
- Posthumous works are dated by their first publication, not their writing. wissen.de notes that Der Process was written in 1914 and published in 1925.4
Sources
- U.S. Copyright Office, Copyright Basics, Circular 1 (revised 09/2021)
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, Leo Tolstoy, Encyclopaedia Britannica (last updated 2026-09-05)
- eNotes, Franz Kafka, Principal Works (accessed 2026-10-28)
- wissen.de, Wissen Media Verlag, Kafka, Franz, wissen.de Lexikon (accessed 2026-10-28)
- Nobel Prize Outreach, Naguib Mahfouz, Bibliography (accessed 2026-10-28)
- Nobel Prize Outreach, Naguib Mahfouz, Biographical (accessed 2026-10-28)