One CSV, one row per book: title, authors, the year of first publication, the true first edition's publisher, place and year, the first UK and first US editions where they differ, Wikidata and Open Library identifiers, and a link to the book's page here. The current file holds 45,455 books and was generated on 21 October 2026.
Where the data comes from
The first-edition facts are the ones shown on each book's page: the publisher's own records and imprint pages, national library catalogues, auction and dealer descriptions, and bibliographies, checked against two sources before a first is flagged, as described in how we check facts. Identifiers come from Wikidata and Open Library, both CC0. Where a first is not yet verified the row carries the year of first publication and blank publisher fields.
Licence and citation
The dataset is released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Use it in research, catalogues, apps and articles; the one condition is a credit to MyVolumes with a link to this page. A suggested citation:
MyVolumes (2026). First editions dataset. https://myvolumes.com/data/
Columns
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| title, authors | The work's title and its authors, separated by semicolons |
| first_published_year | The year the text was first published anywhere |
| first_edition_publisher, first_edition_place, first_edition_year | The true first edition, where verified |
| first_uk_publisher, first_uk_year | The first British edition, where it is not the true first |
| first_us_publisher, first_us_year | The first American edition, where it is not the true first |
| wikidata_qid, openlibrary_key | Identifiers for joining to other datasets |
| myvolumes_url | The book's page, with its editions, points and values |
Corrections
If a row is wrong, tell us with your source and we will check it against a second; corrections appear in the next weekly file.
Last updated 21 October 2026.