# Is "Dark Entries" by Robert Aickman a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Dark Entries by Robert Aickman (Collins, London, 1964) is identified by: Aickman's first solo collection, gathering six stories: "The School Friend," "Ringing the Changes," "Choice of Weapons," "The Waiting Room," "The View," and "Bind Your Hair." Octavo, in the publisher's original tan cloth lettered in gilt on the spine — corroborated independently by two dealers — and issued in the original priced dust wrapper, with the price present at the front flap. The UK Collins issue of 1964 is the true first, and the census claim is correct: there was no contemporary US edition.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Aickman's first solo collection, gathering six stories: "The School Friend," "Ringing the Changes," "Choice of Weapons," "The Waiting Room," "The View," and "Bind Your Hair." Octavo, in the publisher's original tan cloth lettered in gilt on the spine — corroborated independently by two dealers — and issued in the original priced dust wrapper, with the price present at the front flap
- The first impression carries no later-impression or reprint notice
- Collins practice of the period places the date on the title leaf with reprint notices added on the verso, so a copy with a reprint line is not the first
- Recorded in Tymn (ed.), Horror Literature, 4-2
- Routinely called Aickman's scarcest book, and jacketed copies are correspondingly hard to find
- Page count could not be confirmed from the sources consulted, and a report of a later Collins impression in brown cloth with gilt spine lettering surfaced but could not be independently verified — treat it as unconfirmed
- Publisher imprint reads Collins, London

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Robert Aickman |
| Publisher | Collins, London |
| Year | 1964 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Aickman's first solo collection, gathering six stories: "The School Friend," "Ringing the Changes," "Choice of Weapons," "The Waiting… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Aickman's first solo collection, gathering six stories: "The School Friend," "Ringing the Changes," "Choice of Weapons," "The Waiting Room," "The View," and "Bind Your Hair." Octavo, in the publisher's original tan cloth lettered in gilt on the spine — corroborated independently by two dealers — and issued in the original priced dust wrapper, with the price present at the front flap. The first impression carries no later-impression or reprint notice; Collins practice of the period places the date on the title leaf with reprint notices added on the verso, so a copy with a reprint line is not the first. Recorded in Tymn (ed.), Horror Literature, 4-2. Routinely called Aickman's scarcest book, and jacketed copies are correspondingly hard to find. Page count could not be confirmed from the sources consulted, and a report of a later Collins impression in brown cloth with gilt spine lettering surfaced but could not be independently verified — treat it as unconfirmed.

## Is this the true first?
The UK Collins issue of 1964 is the true first, and the census claim is correct: there was no contemporary US edition. American readers reached the contents only decades later, via Tartarus Press's The Collected Strange Stories (1999) and the Faber reissue of 2014 — both first thus, neither a first of Dark Entries.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue is documented. The recurring trap is the Fontana mass-market paperback (Collins' paperback imprint), which dealers catalogue under the Collins name and sometimes list as a "1964 First Edition" — it is a paperback reprint, not the first, and the cloth-and-jacket description above is what separates them. The Tartarus Press and Faber reprints are likewise not firsts.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Dark Entries* by Robert Aickman a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/dark-entries
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.