# Is "Two Sought Adventure" by Fritz Leiber a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Two Sought Adventure by Fritz Leiber (Gnome Press, New York, 1957) is identified by: Full title 'Two Sought Adventure: Exploits of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser'. Census claim confirmed.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Full title 'Two Sought Adventure: Exploits of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser'
- Gnome Press title #62; copyright registered 15 May 1957
- Library of Congress catalog card number 57-7112
- About 4,000 copies were bound in all, in three successive bindings taken from the same sheets — so the POINT OF ISSUE IS THE BINDING, not the jacket
- First binding: black boards, spine lettered in red (3,000 copies, 1957)
- Later bindings: gray cloth lettered in red (about 1,000 copies, c
- Publisher imprint reads Gnome Press, New York

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Fritz Leiber |
| Publisher | Gnome Press, New York |
| Year | 1957 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Full title 'Two Sought Adventure: Exploits of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser' |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Full title 'Two Sought Adventure: Exploits of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser'. Gnome Press title #62; copyright registered 15 May 1957; Library of Congress catalog card number 57-7112; 186 pp. About 4,000 copies were bound in all, in three successive bindings taken from the same sheets — so the POINT OF ISSUE IS THE BINDING, not the jacket. First binding: black boards, spine lettered in red (3,000 copies, 1957). Later bindings: gray cloth lettered in red (about 1,000 copies, c. 1959) and red boards lettered in black (c. 1960); one census records the red-boards variant as 'not seen'. All three variants carry the identical dust jacket, designed by Lionel Dillon, so a correct jacket does NOT confirm a first binding. All variants use the same cheap paper stock characteristic of Gnome's later years under Greenberg; the text block is typically tanned. Priced jacket: price present at the flap.

## Is this the true first?
Census claim confirmed. Gnome Press (New York, 1957) is the true first edition — a US small-press original with no UK predecessor and no foreign-language original, so only the US edition is collected. FIRST-THUS TRAP: the collection was reissued and expanded by Ace Books in 1970 as 'Swords Against Death', dropping the 'Induction' section (that material was reused in the companion volume 'Swords and Deviltry'). The Ace book is a later, differently-constituted text, not an edition of this book, and must never be catalogued as a first of it.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club edition is documented. The reprint tell here is internal rather than external: the gray-cloth (c. 1959) and red-boards (c. 1960) bindings are later issues of the same 1957 sheets, not separate printings — they are the common trap precisely because text block, jacket and imprint are otherwise identical to the first binding. Only black boards lettered in red on the spine represent the first binding.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Two Sought Adventure* by Fritz Leiber a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/two-sought-adventure
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.