# Is "The Dunwich Horror and Others" by H. P. Lovecraft a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Dunwich Horror and Others by H. P. Lovecraft (Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin, 1963) is identified by: Arkham House placed no printing statement on the first printing, and later printings are explicitly noted — dealer catalogues routinely describe copies as "second printing," "stated third impression," "corrected seventh printing" or "stated corrected ninth printing" — so the absence of any printing or impression notice is the baseline test. Arkham House (Sauk City), 1963, is the true first edition of this collection; no UK or other edition precedes it.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Arkham House placed no printing statement on the first printing, and later printings are explicitly noted — dealer catalogues routinely describe copies as "second printing," "stated third impression," "corrected seventh printing" or "stated corrected ninth printing" — so the absence of any printing or impression notice is the baseline test
- The first-printing book is black cloth with the spine stamped in gilt, and is reported to have been bound without head- and tailbands, bands being present on later bindings; this headband point is repeated across the collecting literature but we found it stated in only one independent reference for this title, so treat it as supporting rather than decisive
- The Lee Brown Coye jacket exists in two states: the first-state priced jacket carries biographical matter at the rear flap, while the second-state jacket carries a higher price at the front flap and substitutes an "Other Books" list at the rear flap
- Arkham exhausted first-state jackets before it exhausted first-printing sheets, so genuine first-printing books are legitimately found in second-state jackets — judge the book first and the jacket second
- A text point at page 19, line 1 reads "Elio" and was corrected to "Eliot" beginning with the fourth printing, which makes it a first-through-third-printing marker, not proof of a first printing on its own
- The print run is reported at 3,133 copies
- Publisher imprint reads Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | H. P. Lovecraft |
| Publisher | Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin |
| Year | 1963 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Arkham House placed no printing statement on the first printing, and later printings are explicitly noted — dealer catalogues routinely… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Arkham House placed no printing statement on the first printing, and later printings are explicitly noted — dealer catalogues routinely describe copies as "second printing," "stated third impression," "corrected seventh printing" or "stated corrected ninth printing" — so the absence of any printing or impression notice is the baseline test. The first-printing book is black cloth with the spine stamped in gilt, and is reported to have been bound without head- and tailbands, bands being present on later bindings; this headband point is repeated across the collecting literature but we found it stated in only one independent reference for this title, so treat it as supporting rather than decisive. The Lee Brown Coye jacket exists in two states: the first-state priced jacket carries biographical matter at the rear flap, while the second-state jacket carries a higher price at the front flap and substitutes an "Other Books" list at the rear flap. Arkham exhausted first-state jackets before it exhausted first-printing sheets, so genuine first-printing books are legitimately found in second-state jackets — judge the book first and the jacket second. A text point at page 19, line 1 reads "Elio" and was corrected to "Eliot" beginning with the fourth printing, which makes it a first-through-third-printing marker, not proof of a first printing on its own. The print run is reported at 3,133 copies.

## Is this the true first?
Arkham House (Sauk City), 1963, is the true first edition of this collection; no UK or other edition precedes it. It should be understood as a "first thus" rather than a first appearance of any text: the stories had already been printed in the pulps and in Arkham's earlier Lovecraft omnibuses — The Outsider and Others (1939) and Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1943) hold the first Arkham book appearances. What is genuinely first here is this selection and August Derleth's introduction to it. The census note calling it "first of the definitive core-canon selection" is fair as far as it goes, but the definitive text is precisely what the 1963 printing does not contain.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club edition of the Arkham House volume is documented; the reprint traps are Arkham's own. Ten further printings followed through 2000, each stated, with reported runs between roughly 2,090 and 4,978 copies. From the corrected sixth printing in the mid-1980s the text is S. T. Joshi's revision — sources give the year as both 1984 and 1985, and we could not resolve that discrepancy — and Derleth's introduction is replaced by Joshi's "A Note on the Texts" together with Robert Bloch's "Heritage of Horror"; a copy carrying either of those pieces is never a first printing. Facsimile jackets for this title are openly sold by reproduction specialists, so a bright, unworn Coye jacket on a 1963 book warrants close inspection.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Dunwich Horror and Others* by H. P. Lovecraft a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-dunwich-horror-and-others
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.