The Opener of the Way

Arkham House (Sauk City), 1945, is the true first and the author's first book; nothing precedes it in any language. The census claim is confirmed on precedence, and its reading of the 1974 Neville Spearman (Jersey/London) volume as the only other hardcover is broadly right for the period — that Spearman edition is the first British hardcover, a legitimate separate collectable but not a rival first. A two-volume Panther paperback followed in 1976. The Arkham text went unreprinted in the United States for decades; a Valancourt Books reprint with a new Ramsey Campbell introduction was announced for late 2024, which is a "first thus" for that introduction only.