Lest Darkness Fall

Any copy bearing the Prime Press imprint (1949) is a reprint, not a first, regardless of how it is described — dealers offering it correctly flag it as "First Thus, First Printing," and that phrase is the tell. The Holt sheets are distinguishable at a glance from all later hardcover issues by the pictorial black cloth stamped in white enamel with yellow-stained top edge and untrimmed fore- and bottom edges. Later Ballantine/Del Rey and other paperback issues carry their own imprints. No contemporaneous book-club issue is documented in the sources consulted.