Affordable Gnome Press First Editions: Where to Start
Gnome Press did not last long. From 1948 to roughly 1962, Martin Greenberg and David Kyle ran the imprint on thin margins and sometimes thinner cash, and yet they published a remarkable share of what we now treat as the canon: Asimov’s Foundation books, Robert E. Howard’s Conan in hardcover, early Arthur C. Clarke, Leigh Brackett, C.L. Moore. A first edition from Gnome is a piece of that history. What surprises people new to the imprint is that owning one does not take a four figure budget. The marquee titles climb high, but plenty of genuine Gnome firsts sit comfortably under $100. Here are four currently on our shelves, each verified and documented, that make a sound place to begin. If you want the full backstory of the press first, our history of Gnome Press covers the rise and the collapse.
Address: Centauri, F.L. Wallace ($30)
The most affordable way onto this list, and a quietly interesting book. F.L. Wallace was mostly a Galaxy writer through the 1950s, and Address: Centauri was his one hardcover novel, developed from his shorter work. Currey does not catalog Wallace at all, which is worth knowing rather than worrying about: his bibliography is selective, and an author’s absence from it is not a verdict on the book. It does mean the copyright page is doing the identification work here, and on a copy in hand a first edition statement is an acceptable basis for that. At thirty dollars, this is about as low as the price of admission to a Gnome first edition goes. See the listing.
The Vortex Blaster, E.E. “Doc” Smith ($50)
If you know Smith for the Lensman novels, this is the adjacent book: a fix-up of stories set in the same broad universe, published by Gnome in 1960 and later reissued as Masters of the Vortex. It also carries one of the better points of issue on this list. Currey records two issues. The first carries the Gnome Press imprint and appears in three bindings, with blue boards lettered in yellow taking priority over a gray cloth state and a wrappers state. The second is the odd one: an overrun printed with a Reading, Pennsylvania, Fantasy Press imprint instead. How many of those Fantasy Press copies exist is a question even the publisher could not answer the same way twice. In letters to Currey, Lloyd Eshbach put the number at 100, then at 300, and in his own memoir at 341. First edition is stated on the copyright pages of both issues. For fifty dollars, you get a book with a bibliographic footnote that pricier titles would envy. View this copy.
Judgment Night, C.L. Moore ($70)
Catherine Lucile Moore was one of the finest writers of her generation in either science fiction or fantasy, and she stays undervalued in the market relative to her male contemporaries, which is part of what makes her Gnome firsts appealing right now. Judgment Night, published in 1952, collects the title novella with several stories. Currey lists two bindings with a clear priority: cloth first, then boards. The distinction is simple to check and worth checking, since the cloth binding is the one collectors want. At seventy dollars this is a real first edition of a major author, which is not a sentence you can write about many writers of her standing. Full description and photos here.
Pattern for Conquest, George O. Smith ($85)
One of Gnome’s earliest titles, from 1949, and the one here with a genuine trap built in. Currey notes that Pattern for Conquest was reprinted around 1952 in paper wrappers for distribution to United States military personnel, and that this later printing kept the first edition statement on its copyright page. The statement alone, in other words, does not prove a first. The binding does: a true first is in cloth boards, not wrappers, the same caution that applies to the Gnome edition of Asimov’s I, Robot, which we covered in our guide to the Gnome Press Asimov firsts. Our copy is the cloth first edition, in a jacket credited to Edd Cartier, whose cover and interior work shaped the look of so much Golden Age science fiction. At eighty five dollars it is the priciest book on this list and the most historically layered. See the full listing.
Where to go from here
None of these will anchor a museum collection, and that is the point. They are honest first editions from one of the most important imprints in the history of the genre, priced so that a collection can actually begin. Start with one, learn the binding it came in, and the rest of Gnome opens up from there. Browse the current science fiction inventory and see what is in reach.
Bibliographic details cross-referenced against L.W. Currey, Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors (revised edition), except where noted. Independent verification recommended before attribution of high-value copies.
