Born of Man and Woman

US first: The Chamberlain Press, Inc., Philadelphia, 1954 — the only hardcover printing and the true first of Matheson's first book. Two abridged successors are routinely mis-sold as firsts. Bantam's US paperback of 1955, retitled Third from the Sun (Bantam number 1294), drops four stories. The first British edition — Max Reinhardt, London, 1956 — runs to 164 pages and drops the Robert Bloch introduction along with four stories; it is collected as the first UK edition but is an abridged text, not the complete book, and dealer descriptions of its binding conflict (black boards lettered silver in one, red boards lettered gilt in another), so binding alone should not be used to authenticate it.