H. P. Lovecraft First Editions

• The Shunned House — 1928 · W. Paul Cook / The Recluse Press, Athol, MAFirst edition: Athol, Massachusetts, published by W. Paul Cook, The Recluse Press, 1928, with a preface by Frank Belknap Long, Jr. Octavo, collating pp. [1-8] 9-58 [59] [60: blank]; approximately 300 sets of sheets were printed (some accounts say about 250). Cook's business collapsed and not a single copy was bound or issued in 1928, so the first edition exists only as sheets and in later bindings — binding state…. The census claim is confirmed on both counts: US only, and binding state determines everything. There is no UK, foreign-language, or competing edition, and no precedence question. The 1928 Recluse Press sheets are the first printing of the text — the story's first magazine appearance was in Weird Tales for October 1937, posthumously and nine years later. The critical nuance for buyers is the inverse of the usual…. No book-club edition exists and none is possible. There is no legitimate reprint of the 1928 sheets themselves — later appearances of the text (Arkham House's collected volumes from 1939 onward, and modern editions including facsimile and homage printings) are wholly separate reprints with no 1928 sheets in them. Confirm the collation, the Canterbury watermark and the Cook copyright statement (cancelled or….
• The Shadow over Innsmouth — 1936 · Visionary Publishing Co., Everett, PAFirst edition: Everett, Pennsylvania, Visionary Publishing Co. (William L. Crawford), 1936. The copyright page reads 'Published, April, 1936,' but the book did not actually appear until November 1936 — the stated month is not a printing state, it is simply wrong. Octavo, collating pp. [1-16: blank] [1-12] 13-158 [159-176: blank], the first and last leaves used as pastedowns, with four black-and-white…. The census claim is confirmed and can be tightened. The Visionary 1936 book is the sole edition and the first appearance of the text anywhere; there is no UK, US-vs-UK, or original-language precedence question. The Weird Tales appearance of January 1942 is posthumous, abridged and unauthorized, and is later in every sense. One correction of framing: The Shunned House was printed in 1928, within Lovecraft's…. No book-club edition exists and none is possible for a 200-copy binding. Everything later is a reprint: Arkham House's collected volumes from 1939 onward, and the very large modern reprint and facsimile literature, all of which are 'first thus' at best. Any copy in a binding other than black cloth silver-stamped, or bearing a publisher other than Visionary Publishing Co., Everett, PA, is not the first.
• The Outsider and Others — 1939 · Arkham HouseArkham House's first book. Edition of 1,268 copies, black cloth lettered in gilt on the spine, large octavo, xiv + 553 pp. Dust jacket a montage by Virgil Finlay, carrying the printed price unclipped. Printed by George Banta Co. Never reprinted in this form. The true first collected Lovecraft; a single-printing edition of 1,268, so first edition equals first printing. The original dust jacket is essential. Out of print by 1944. No book club edition exists; later Arkham collections (such as the 1943 Beyond the Wall of Sleep) are different titles. Facsimile/reprint jackets exist — verify jacket paper and printing against known originals.
• Beyond the Wall of Sleep — 1943 · Arkham HouseSecond Arkham House Lovecraft omnibus and the fourth Arkham House book overall; edition of 1,217 copies, black cloth gilt-lettered on the spine, dust jacket carrying the printed price. Single printing. The 1,217-copy 1943 printing is the true first; never reprinted in this form. A notably smaller run than The Outsider and Others. No book club edition exists; contents were later redistributed across the corrected Arkham collections. A genuine 1943 copy is the first.
• Marginalia — 1944 · Arkham House, Sauk City, WisconsinThere is no statement of printing on the copyright page; Arkham House printed a single run of 2,035 copies, so any copy of the 1944 book is the first printing. Collation is x, 377, [1] pp., bound in publisher's black cloth with gilt lettering to the spine. The dust jacket reproduces Virgil Finlay's illustration for Lovecraft's 'The Shunned House' (Weird Tales, October 1937); a first-state jacket is unclipped with…. US only. The Arkham House (Sauk City) 1944 printing is the sole first edition — no UK edition and no original-language issue elsewhere. It is the third of the core Arkham Lovecraft omnibus trio, following The Outsider and Others (Arkham House, 1939) and Beyond the Wall of Sleep (Arkham House, 1943). 'First thus' trap: much of the contents was later redistributed through Arkham's own Lovecraft volumes — notably…. No book-club issue and no Arkham reprint of Marginalia is recorded; the title was printed once, in 2,035 copies, and never re-set by Arkham. Because there is no printing statement to read, the tells that matter are the black cloth/gilt spine binding and the Finlay 'Shunned House' jacket — a later Lovecraft collection reprinting this material (e.g. The Curse of Yig, 1953) is a different book, not a later state of….
• The Dunwich Horror and Others — 1963 · Arkham House, Sauk City, WisconsinArkham House placed no printing statement on the first printing, and later printings are explicitly noted — dealer catalogues routinely describe copies as "second printing," "stated third impression," "corrected seventh printing" or "stated corrected ninth printing" — so the absence of any printing or impression notice is the baseline test. The first-printing book is black cloth with the spine stamped in gilt,…. Arkham House (Sauk City), 1963, is the true first edition of this collection; no UK or other edition precedes it. It should be understood as a "first thus" rather than a first appearance of any text: the stories had already been printed in the pulps and in Arkham's earlier Lovecraft omnibuses — The Outsider and Others (1939) and Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1943) hold the first Arkham book appearances. What is…. No book-club edition of the Arkham House volume is documented; the reprint traps are Arkham's own. Ten further printings followed through 2000, each stated, with reported runs between roughly 2,090 and 4,978 copies. From the corrected sixth printing in the mid-1980s the text is S. T. Joshi's revision — sources give the year as both 1984 and 1985, and we could not resolve that discrepancy — and Derleth's….
• At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels — 1964 · Arkham House, Sauk City, WisconsinNo printing statement appears on the first printing. The colophon at the rear states an edition of three thousand copies although the run in fact came to 3,552, so a stated three-thousand colophon is normal on a first and is not itself evidence of anything later. Later printings are stated and are catalogued as such by dealers — "a second printing of three thousand printed copies stated," "stated third…. Arkham House (Sauk City), 1964, is the true first, and the census claim is confirmed: the first UK edition is Victor Gollancz (London), 1966, a first edition and first impression in its own right, bound in black buckram with gilt spine lettering and carrying the same selection. Both are collected — the Gollancz is the one to hold for a UK-first collection — but the Arkham precedes it by two years and is the true…. No book-club edition of the Arkham volume is documented. The traps are Arkham's own stated later printings, and above all the corrected fifth printing of 1986 (reported at 3,990 copies) edited by S. T. Joshi, which restores the texts and drops Derleth's introduction; printings six through nine follow to 2001 carrying the corrected text. Facsimile jackets for Arkham House titles are commercially available, so a….

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