Is My The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth, and Other Stories a First Edition?

The points of issue

• Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1971. "First Edition" is stated on the copyright page beneath the copyright notice — Doubleday house practice from 1927 to 2000 — with no number line
• Publisher's dark blue cloth, the spine lettered in silver; collates [x], 229 pp.; fifteen stories
• The jacket should be priced at the flap (price present, unclipped)
• One caution that trips people up: Doubleday applied a gutter code — a small alphanumeric code in the gutter margin of an inner signature — to BOTH trade and book-club printings from mid-1958 to mid-1987, so the presence of a gutter code on a 1971 Doubleday is normal and is not by itself a reprint or book-club tell
• Critically, the stated "First Edition" is also not sufficient on its own for this publisher; see the book-club note

How Doubleday & Company, Inc. marked a first edition

• Mid-1958–early 1959: numerical gutter code (1–52) on the last page of text indicating the WEEK of printing. Early 1959–1987: added a LETTER code before the week code indicating the YEAR.

Full Doubleday & Company, Inc. first-edition guide →

How to verify your copy, step by step

1. Find the copyright page — the verso (back) of the title page.
2. Confirm the first-edition statement — look for “First Edition,” “First Printing,” or the publisher’s equivalent wording.
3. Read the number line — the lowest number is the printing. A line including 1 is a first printing (Random House deliberately ends at 2). Paste it into the decoder.
4. Verify this is the US true first — not a later-market or reprint edition.
5. Rule out a book-club edition — a blind-stamp on the rear board or a jacket with no printed price marks a book-club copy.
6. Photograph four things — the front cover, spine, title page, and copyright page — the standard record for identification.

The dust jacket

For a collectible first edition the dust jacket matters as much as the book. Confirm the jacket is present and unclipped — the printed price should still be at the corner of the flap (a clipped corner or a price-less flap can indicate a book-club issue). First-state jackets can differ from later ones in the cover art, blurbs, or review quotations; where a specific first-state jacket point is known for this title it is noted above.

Binding & format

Where multiple bindings exist, the hardcover trade issue is usually (but not always) the precedence copy — confirm against the points above. Later printings often show cheaper cloth, thinner boards, or simplified spine stamping. A simultaneous signed or limited issue, when one exists, is a distinct state from the trade first.

Is this the true first?

US first, and the census call is correct: the Doubleday 1971 is the true first edition and no UK edition precedes it. The first UK edition was published by Faber and Faber, London — original yellow cloth, spine lettered in black, dust jacket illustrated by Dennis Leigh, ISBN 0571101054 — and is collected as the first British edition. Dealer listings date the Faber issue inconsistently to both 1971 and 1973 and that conflict was not resolved here; it does not disturb precedence, as the Doubleday is first on either dating, but the Faber year should not be stated flatly. The collection is the first book appearance only: the constituent stories appeared first in periodicals through the 1960s, the title novelette having taken the first Nebula Award for Best Novelette in 1965.

Telling it from reprints & book-club editions

This is the central trap for Doubleday science fiction and the reason a stated "First Edition" settles nothing here: Science Fiction Book Club printings of Doubleday titles can RETAIN the "First Edition" statement on the copyright page. A book-club copy remains a book-club copy regardless of that statement. The tells are physical and on the jacket: a small blind-stamped square (or comparable blindstamp) at the lower right of the rear board; a jacket carrying no price at the flap but instead a five-digit book-club code, frequently black numerals in a white block; and smaller trim size, thinner paper, cheaper binding and a smaller, less legible typeface than the trade issue. Separately, Wikipedia records that two stories, "The Furies" and "The Graveyard Heart," were added in later printings for a total of seventeen — so a copy collating seventeen stories is not the 1971 first printing. That last point rests on a single pointer source and was not corroborated in a dealer bibliography or a Zelazny bibliography.

Frequently asked questions

Is my copy of The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth, and Other Stories a first edition?

A first edition of The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth, and Other Stories by Roger Zelazny (Doubleday & Company, Inc.) is identified by: Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1971.

How do I tell the first printing from a later one?

Check the copyright page. A number line whose lowest number is 1 marks a first printing (Random House ends at 2). US first, and the census call is correct: the Doubleday 1971 is the true first edition and no UK edition precedes it.

Is the book-club edition the same as the first?

This is the central trap for Doubleday science fiction and the reason a stated "First Edition" settles nothing here: Science Fiction Book Club printings of Doubleday titles can RETAIN the "First Edition" statement on the copyright page. A book-club copy remains a book-club copy regardless of that statement. The tells are physical and on the jacket: a small blind-stamped square (or comparable blindstamp) at the lower right of the rear board; a jacket carrying no price at the flap but instead a fi

I have a first edition of The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth, and Other Stories — what should I do?

First, document the copy: photograph the copyright page (the number line and any edition statement) and the dust-jacket flap — an unclipped, priced jacket matters. Confirm the points of issue above against your copy, and use the free First Edition Checker to decode the printing. To sell, the author’s collecting guide covers the market. And if you are clearing books in the Albuquerque area, the New Mexico Literacy Project offers free pickup, any condition, and makes sure collectible copies are identified rather than discarded.

Glossary

First edition

Every copy printed from the first setting of type. Collectors usually want the first edition, first printing (the true first).

First printing / impression

A single press run from that setting. The first printing is the earliest and most desirable; later printings are still the first edition but not the true first.

Number line (printer's key)

A row of numbers on the copyright page (e.g. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1). The lowest number present is the printing — a line including 1 marks a first printing (Random House deliberately ends at 2).

Points of issue

Specific physical details — a stated edition, a number line, a typo, a jacket state — that identify the true first printing.

Book-club edition (BCE)

A reprint made for a book club. Tells include a blind-stamped dot or square on the rear board and a dust jacket with no printed price. Not the true first.

First thus

The first appearance of a particular version (first paperback, first illustrated, first U.S. printing) — a first of that kind, not the first edition of the work.