# Is "The Languages of Pao" by Jack Vance a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Languages of Pao by Jack Vance (Avalon Books / Thomas Bouregy & Co., 1958) is identified by: First edition: New York, Avalon Books (Thomas Bouregy & Co.), 1958; octavo, cloth, issued in a pictorial dust jacket illustrated by Ric Binkley — the Binkley jacket is the surest single check, since no later edition carries it. US precedes and is the true first: Avalon Books (New York), 1958.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition: New York, Avalon Books (Thomas Bouregy & Co.), 1958; octavo, cloth, issued in a pictorial dust jacket illustrated by Ric Binkley — the Binkley jacket is the surest single check, since no later edition carries it
- Cited as Hewett and Mallett, The Work of Jack Vance, A8
- Avalon used no number line and no edition statement on the copyright page; the publisher's recorded practice is that Avalon does not normally reprint and that later printings would be noted, so the Avalon/Bouregy imprint, the 1958 date and the Binkley jacket carry the identification
- Price present at the flap; dealers consistently record slight colour fade to the jacket's spine lettering ink and rubbing at spine ends, and price-clipped copies are common
- As with Big Planet, the Avalon first contains a cut text — Avalon trimmed its books to a uniform house length
- Publisher imprint reads Avalon Books / Thomas Bouregy & Co.
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Jack Vance |
| Publisher | Avalon Books / Thomas Bouregy & Co. |
| Year | 1958 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | First edition: New York, Avalon Books (Thomas Bouregy & Co.), 1958; octavo, cloth, issued in a pictorial dust jacket illustrated by Ric… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
First edition: New York, Avalon Books (Thomas Bouregy & Co.), 1958; octavo, cloth, issued in a pictorial dust jacket illustrated by Ric Binkley — the Binkley jacket is the surest single check, since no later edition carries it. Cited as Hewett and Mallett, The Work of Jack Vance, A8. Avalon used no number line and no edition statement on the copyright page; the publisher's recorded practice is that Avalon does not normally reprint and that later printings would be noted, so the Avalon/Bouregy imprint, the 1958 date and the Binkley jacket carry the identification. Price present at the flap; dealers consistently record slight colour fade to the jacket's spine lettering ink and rubbing at spine ends, and price-clipped copies are common. As with Big Planet, the Avalon first contains a cut text — Avalon trimmed its books to a uniform house length.

## Is this the true first?
US precedes and is the true first: Avalon Books (New York), 1958. Britain trailed by sixteen years and arrived only in wrappers — Mayflower (Granada) paperback, 21 March 1974, 157 pp. — so there is no competing British hardcover first. Two first-thus traps bracket the Avalon, in opposite directions. Backward: a shorter version ran in Satellite Science Fiction (December 1957), which precedes the book but is a periodical, not an edition of the novel. Forward: the full restored text was not printed until Underwood/Miller (San Francisco and Columbia, PA), 1979 — 500 copies, of which 389 were unnumbered and 111 numbered and signed by Vance and jacket artist Joe Pearson — catalogued by dealers as "first edition thus" and the first printing of the full restored text, not the first edition.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club printing of the Avalon edition is documented in the sources consulted. Avalon's market was libraries, so ex-library copies are the routine trap rather than club copies. Rule out the Mayflower/Granada paperback (1974), the Underwood/Miller 1979 limited (a "first thus" carrying the restored text), and later paperback and small-press reissues. Any cloth copy lacking the Avalon Books / Thomas Bouregy imprint, the 1958 date and the Ric Binkley jacket is not the first.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Languages of Pao* by Jack Vance a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-languages-of-pao
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.