Our Dennis the Menace was in print before the American version, of that we can be sure. The British Dennis and his US namesake apparently made their public debuts on the same day (March 12th), but due to the way UK comics are prepared and produced in advance of their on-sale dates, The Beano was already printed and sitting in a warehouse for at least a week (possibly as much as a fortnight) before being distributed to newsagents across the country. As to which Dennis was created first, well... that's a different matter that nobody can determine at this point in time. The US Dennis, had he debuted in a comic instead of a daily newspaper, might've had a chance of getting "out of the gate" first, but no... it wasn't to be, and our menace won that particular race in convincing fashion.
Dennis has appeared in every issue of The Beano since his debut in 1951, and in 1955 the very first Dennis the Menace book was published. It was issued every two years up until the book for 1978, and was then "rested" until the appearance of the book for 1983, whereupon it resumed its bi-yearly status. That changed with the book for 1987, which was the first one to come out a year before the next release, though the book for 1988 was the first one to come out a year after the previous one, so it's perhaps arguable as to which one truly deserves to be called the first "annual". The books didn't carry a cover date until the one for 1966, but remember that British books/annuals are usually always dated ahead, so the year on the cover isn't the year of publication. The final book was the one for 2011, meaning that there were 39 books in total over a 55 year period.
Which now brings us to the good stuff. Here are the covers for the first 20 books, front and back, except where the same illustration is used on both, in which case only the front cover is shown. The remaining covers will appear in a future post.
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