# Is "The Opener of the Way" by Robert Bloch a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Opener of the Way by Robert Bloch (Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin, 1945) is identified by: There is one Arkham printing only — 2,065 copies — so any copy bearing the Arkham House, Sauk City, 1945 imprint is the first printing; there is no printing statement to look for and none should be present. Arkham House (Sauk City), 1945, is the true first and the author's first book; nothing precedes it in any language.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- There is one Arkham printing only — 2,065 copies — so any copy bearing the Arkham House, Sauk City, 1945 imprint is the first printing; there is no printing statement to look for and none should be present
- The book is bound in original black cloth, collating xi + 309 pages, and the jacket, illustrated and designed by Ronald Clyne, should be present and priced at the front flap
- This is Bloch's first book; the volume gathers 22 tales, opening with "By Way of Introduction" and including "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" and "The Shambler from the Stars," most having appeared in Weird Tales during the 1930s and 1940s
- Publisher imprint reads Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Robert Bloch |
| Publisher | Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin |
| Year | 1945 |
| True first | British edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | There is one Arkham printing only — 2,065 copies — so any copy bearing the Arkham House, Sauk City, 1945 imprint is the first printing… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
There is one Arkham printing only — 2,065 copies — so any copy bearing the Arkham House, Sauk City, 1945 imprint is the first printing; there is no printing statement to look for and none should be present. The book is bound in original black cloth, collating xi + 309 pages, and the jacket, illustrated and designed by Ronald Clyne, should be present and priced at the front flap. This is Bloch's first book; the volume gathers 22 tales, opening with "By Way of Introduction" and including "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" and "The Shambler from the Stars," most having appeared in Weird Tales during the 1930s and 1940s.

## Is this the true first?
Arkham House (Sauk City), 1945, is the true first and the author's first book; nothing precedes it in any language. The census claim is confirmed on precedence, and its reading of the 1974 Neville Spearman (Jersey/London) volume as the only other hardcover is broadly right for the period — that Spearman edition is the first British hardcover, a legitimate separate collectable but not a rival first. A two-volume Panther paperback followed in 1976. The Arkham text went unreprinted in the United States for decades; a Valancourt Books reprint with a new Ramsey Campbell introduction was announced for late 2024, which is a "first thus" for that introduction only.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club edition is documented, and Arkham never reprinted the title, so there is no later Arkham printing to confuse with the first. The reissues to know are the Spearman 1974 British hardcover — black cloth with gilt spine titling and the same 309-page collation, externally close enough to the Arkham book that the title page must be read — the Panther paperbacks of 1976, an Italian translation of 1991 with the stories reordered, and the 1994 omnibus The Early Fears, which absorbs the contents without Bloch's introduction. Facsimile jackets for Arkham House titles are sold openly by reproduction specialists.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Opener of the Way* by Robert Bloch a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-opener-of-the-way
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.