# Is "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72" by Hunter S. Thompson a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson (Straight Arrow Books, 1973) is identified by: First edition, first printing: Straight Arrow Books, San Francisco, 1973; 506 pages, octavo, bound in black boards stamped in white on the spine with blind-stamped decoration to the front cover and black endpapers. The census claim that no contemporary UK edition exists is incorrect and has been corrected.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition, first printing: Straight Arrow Books, San Francisco, 1973
- 506 pages, octavo, bound in black boards stamped in white on the spine with blind-stamped decoration to the front cover and black endpapers
- Illustrated throughout with full-page and in-text drawings by Ralph Steadman; jacket art by Tom Benton
- The governing point is the jacket, not the book: the first-state jacket has a white border around the rear-panel photograph of Thompson with George McGovern
- The second-state jacket lacks that white border around the rear photograph and carries a printed price on the front blurb; a priced jacket alone is therefore not diagnostic here — check the border
- Copies are routinely catalogued as 'first edition, first printing, second state jacket', confirming that the two jacket states occur on the same printing
- Publisher imprint reads Straight Arrow Books

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Hunter S. Thompson |
| Publisher | Straight Arrow Books |
| Year | 1973 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | First edition, first printing: Straight Arrow Books, San Francisco, 1973 |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
First edition, first printing: Straight Arrow Books, San Francisco, 1973; 506 pages, octavo, bound in black boards stamped in white on the spine with blind-stamped decoration to the front cover and black endpapers. Illustrated throughout with full-page and in-text drawings by Ralph Steadman; jacket art by Tom Benton. The governing point is the jacket, not the book: the first-state jacket has a white border around the rear-panel photograph of Thompson with George McGovern. The second-state jacket lacks that white border around the rear photograph and carries a printed price on the front blurb; a priced jacket alone is therefore not diagnostic here — check the border. Copies are routinely catalogued as 'first edition, first printing, second state jacket', confirming that the two jacket states occur on the same printing. The first-edition title page carries the colon form of the title ('Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72'), which later editions drop. Note a cataloguing discrepancy: two dealers give the imprint city as New York, but the imprint was Rolling Stone's San Francisco book arm and three independent sources give San Francisco.

## Is this the true first?
The census claim that no contemporary UK edition exists is incorrect and has been corrected. The US Straight Arrow Books (San Francisco) 1973 edition is the true first. A UK edition followed from Allison & Busby, London, in 1974 (ISBN 085031125X), also 506 pages, with Ralph Steadman jacket art — it is collected in its own right as the first UK edition but is preceded by the American issue by roughly a year.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book club edition is documented in the sources consulted, including the HST Books bibliography, which lists the first issue and the first-edition/second-issue jacket variant but records no club printing.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72* by Hunter S. Thompson a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/fear-and-loathing-on-the-campaign-trail-72
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.