# Is "Solaris" by Stanislaw Lem a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Solaris by Stanislaw Lem (Wydawnictwo Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej, 1961) is identified by: The census claim holds: Wydawnictwo MON, Warszawa 1961 is the true first, confirmed against the author's own bibliography site and Polish antiquarian cataloguing. Polish original: Wydawnictwo MON (Warsaw, 1961).

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The census claim holds: Wydawnictwo MON, Warszawa 1961 is the true first, confirmed against the author's own bibliography site and Polish antiquarian cataloguing
- The first edition is issued in soft covers (wrappers) with a pictorial dust jacket, roughly 196 pages plus a few unnumbered leaves, about 20 cm tall
- The jacket, the cover and the title page were all designed by Konstanty Maria Sopocko; the author's biography is printed on the front jacket flap
- MON reprinted the book from the same house in Warsaw in 1962 and again in 1963, so the date on the title page and copyright page is the operative check — a MON imprint alone does not make a first
- The fragile jacket is the scarce element; the wrappered book survives far more often without it
- Publisher imprint reads Wydawnictwo Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Stanislaw Lem |
| Publisher | Wydawnictwo Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej |
| Year | 1961 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | The census claim holds: Wydawnictwo MON, Warszawa 1961 is the true first, confirmed against the author's own bibliography site and Polish… |
| Book-club edition exists? | Yes |

## Points of issue
The census claim holds: Wydawnictwo MON, Warszawa 1961 is the true first, confirmed against the author's own bibliography site and Polish antiquarian cataloguing. The first edition is issued in soft covers (wrappers) with a pictorial dust jacket, roughly 196 pages plus a few unnumbered leaves, about 20 cm tall. The jacket, the cover and the title page were all designed by Konstanty Maria Sopocko; the author's biography is printed on the front jacket flap. MON reprinted the book from the same house in Warsaw in 1962 and again in 1963, so the date on the title page and copyright page is the operative check — a MON imprint alone does not make a first. The fragile jacket is the scarce element; the wrappered book survives far more often without it.

## Is this the true first?
Polish original: Wydawnictwo MON (Warsaw, 1961). The first edition in any other language is the French (1964); the first English is Walker and Company (New York, 1970), catalogued by ABAA dealers as "first edition in English, first printing" — publisher's white cloth lettered in black, 216 pp, jacket designed by Lena Fong Hor with illustration by Jack Gaughan, priced jacket / price present at the flap on an unclipped example. That translation, by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox, was made not from the Polish but from the French, a fact Lem objected to publicly for the rest of his life. The UK first is Faber and Faber (London, 1971), reprinting the same Kilmartin-Cox text — a first thus, and it follows Walker by a year. Both the 1961 MON Polish and the 1970 Walker English are separately collected.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
MON's own Warsaw reprints of 1962 and 1963 are the commonest trap for the 1961 first, being identical in publisher and format. On the English side, all Faber, Harcourt and Harvest issues reprint the Kilmartin-Cox text and are first thus at best; the 1970 Walker is the only first English printing. No book-club issue of either the 1961 MON edition or the 1970 Walker edition is documented in the sources consulted.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Solaris* by Stanislaw Lem a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/solaris
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.