# Is "Night's Black Agents" by Fritz Leiber a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Night's Black Agents by Fritz Leiber (Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin, 1947) is identified by: Currey records "no statement of printing" for this book, and Arkham printed it once — 3,084 copies — so an Arkham House, Sauk City, 1947 imprint carrying no impression notice is the first printing. Arkham House (Sauk City), 1947, is the true first, and the census is right that this is Leiber's debut collection containing "Smoke Ghost." The census note naming Kaye & Ward as the British publisher is wrong and is corrected here: the first British hardcover is Neville Spearman (Jersey), 1975, ISBN 0-85978-013-9, octavo in boards with jacket art by David L.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- L. W. Currey records "no statement of printing" for this book, and Arkham printed it once — 3,084 copies — so an Arkham House, Sauk City, 1947 imprint carrying no impression notice is the first printing
- The binding is publisher's black cloth, octavo, collating x + 237 pages, and the jacket is by Ronald Clyne and should be priced at the front flap; a price-clipped flap is common on surviving copies and is a condition matter, not an issue point
- This is Leiber's first book: ten stories, three of them first published here, most of the rest drawn from Unknown and Weird Tales, with "Smoke Ghost" present and the last two pieces the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser tales, including the novella "Adept's Gambit."
- Publisher imprint reads Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Fritz Leiber |
| Publisher | Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin |
| Year | 1947 |
| True first | British edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | L. W. Currey records "no statement of printing" for this book, and Arkham printed it once — 3,084 copies — so an Arkham House, Sauk City… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
L. W. Currey records "no statement of printing" for this book, and Arkham printed it once — 3,084 copies — so an Arkham House, Sauk City, 1947 imprint carrying no impression notice is the first printing. The binding is publisher's black cloth, octavo, collating x + 237 pages, and the jacket is by Ronald Clyne and should be priced at the front flap; a price-clipped flap is common on surviving copies and is a condition matter, not an issue point. This is Leiber's first book: ten stories, three of them first published here, most of the rest drawn from Unknown and Weird Tales, with "Smoke Ghost" present and the last two pieces the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser tales, including the novella "Adept's Gambit."

## Is this the true first?
Arkham House (Sauk City), 1947, is the true first, and the census is right that this is Leiber's debut collection containing "Smoke Ghost." The census note naming Kaye & Ward as the British publisher is wrong and is corrected here: the first British hardcover is Neville Spearman (Jersey), 1975, ISBN 0-85978-013-9, octavo in boards with jacket art by David L. Fletcher, its text offset from the 1947 Arkham setting. The Spearman is collectable as the UK first but is not a rival to the Arkham book, which precedes it by twenty-eight years.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club edition of the Arkham volume is documented, and Arkham did not reprint it. The expansions are the real traps: the Berkley paperback of 1978 adds "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes" and "A Bit of the Dark World," and the Gregg Press hardcover of 1980 — sometimes called the definitive version — adds a Richard Gid Powers foreword on top of the Berkley contents. A copy containing either added story is not the Arkham first, whatever its binding suggests. Facsimile jackets for Arkham House titles are commercially available.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Night's Black Agents* by Fritz Leiber a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/nights-black-agents
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.