Is there one great source for finding the original publication date of a book?
I don’t know of anything like what you are asking about – it would be an amazing source it it existed. If you have access to the database called the English Short Title Catelogue (by subscription only, but many universities have it), that may be of help for books published in English or in Britain between c1450 and 1700. There is another database for Eighteen Century Collections online. But no matter what, sometimes identifying all the editions of an older book is just difficult (people spend their careers working on this sort of thing), and without actually seeing the book, you might not be sure if it is the same text as another or not. I remember going to the British Library to look at a pamphlet from 1647, only to find out it was exactly the same text as a 1629 pamphlet I’d already read (except for the title, obviously).
