SWORDS AND DEVILTRY. The Chronicles of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Volume One.

First edition with these illustrations. Limited edition. Deluxe issue. Signed by the illustrator. Publisher's original black cloth with titles in gilt and red to the spine, with pictorial onlay to the upper board, in the Tom Kidd wraparound-illustrated dustwrapper. Housed in the dark brown and black cloth slipcase, with gilt and red titles to the backstrip Top edge dark brown. Burgundy satin bookmark. Illustrated endpapers. With a colour frontispiece and five two-tone plates by Tom Kidd throughout, and with two black and white photographs of the author to the rear. A fine copy, the binding square and firm, the cloth bright and fresh. The contents are clean throughout, and without previous owners' inscriptions or stamps. Complete in the fine original dustwrapper that remains without fading, loss or tears. Housed in the fine, structurally sound slipcase, which is a little rubbed and has some light finger marks to the sides.

Issued in a deluxe limited edition of just 50 copies, from which this example is numbered 48 and signed by the illustrator Tom Kidd in black ink on the tissue-guarded colophon. A facsimile of Fritz Leiber's signature is printed black. Volume one of 'The Chronicles of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser', the multi-award winning author Fritz Leiber's classic sword and sorcery fantasy series about the adventures of two unlikely heroes and friends, the gargantuan barbarian Fafhrd and the diminutive thief Gray Mouser. The series is made up of novellas and vignettes that were first published in magazines (most frequently in 'Fantastic' magazine) before being collected into the 'Swords' series in book form. The fourth short story included here 'Ill Met in Lankhmar' (1970: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction) received the 1970 Nebula Award and the 1971 Hugo Award for Best Novella. Leiber is considered a master of the sword and sorcery genre and popularized the term himself in 1961. A 'Bonus Content' section at the rear contains an interview with Leiber by Jim Purviance from 1978.