2 E. E. 'Doc' Smith first editions are documented on this shelf, from The Skylark of Space (1946) to Triplanetary (1948) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that E. E. 'Doc' Smith title from later printings and book-club copies — the publisher and year to expect, the number-line or edition-statement conventions, and the tells that show up in online listings.

Identification only, per the house rule: no prices and no appraisals here. Checking a E. E. 'Doc' Smith copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.

The Skylark of Space — 1946 · The Buffalo Book CompanyFirst book edition: The Buffalo Book Company, 1946, in a printing of 500 copies. No statement of edition or printing appears, so identification is by the Buffalo Book Company imprint and 1946 date on the title page together with the collation: octavo, pp. [1-11] 12-303 [304: blank], bound in red cloth with the front and spine panels stamped in gold; pictorial jacket, price present at the flap. The jacket artist…. The census is correct on publisher and year — Buffalo Book Company, 1946 is the true first in book form, the novel having been serialized in Amazing Stories in 1928 — but the rest of the census note is wrong and is corrected here: there is no Fantasy Press edition of The Skylark of Space. Fantasy Press (Lloyd Arthur Eshbach) published the sequels and the Lensman books, not this title, so no "revised Fantasy Press…. No book-club issue of the 1946 Buffalo Book printing is documented in the sources consulted. The reprints to rule out are the 1947 Hadley Publishing reset — a different setting throughout, and illustrated — and the 1950 F.F.F. Publishers issue, identifiable by its shorter pagination; both carry their own imprints on the title page. Later paperback and trade reprints (including the 2001 Bison Books trade….
Triplanetary — 1948 · Fantasy PressFirst book edition: Fantasy Press, Reading, Pennsylvania, 1948. Fantasy Press states "First Edition" on the copyright page with no further printing noted — this is the house practice recorded by Quill & Brush ("States 'First Edition' on copyright page") and confirmed by L. W. Currey's Fantasy Press catalogue entries ("First edition so stated on copyright page"). Two issues were made up from the same first…. US original — the Fantasy Press 1948 edition is the first appearance in book form anywhere, and the census claim is correct. There is no earlier or competing UK edition and no original-language issue elsewhere. The important trap is textual rather than geographic: the 1948 book is NOT a reissue of the 1934 Amazing Stories serial of the same name. It is a substantially rewritten fix-up retrofitted as the Lensman…. Quill & Brush warns explicitly that Fantasy Press "may have occasionally left 'First Edition' statement of original publisher on offset reprints with their imprint" — so the copyright-page statement alone is not sufficient. Always read the imprint on the spine, title page and jacket: a "First Edition" statement under any imprint other than Fantasy Press, Reading, PA is a carried-over statement on a reprint, not a….

More Literary Fiction (US) & Award Winners shelves: E. L. Doctorow, Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Edith Wharton, Edna Ferber, Edna Lewis.

← All authors · All genres · part of the First-Edition Identification resource.