The UK had a quality press and the US never did, shaping scholarly reception.

Evidence

For the reasons indicated above, as well as others, the original version, published simultaneously in London and New York, had completely different receptions in the two countries. In those distant days, the UK still had a ‘quality press,’ and IC was almost immediately reviewed by Edmund Leach, Conor Cruise O’Brien, Neal Ascherson, and the Jamaican Marxist Winston James. In the US, which has never had a ‘quality press,’ it was scarcely noticed. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 789