SWORDS AND ICE MAGIC. The Chronicles of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Volume Six.

First edition with these illustrations. Limited edition. Signed by the illustrator. Publisher's original black cloth with gilt and red titles to the spine, with pictorial onlay to the upper board, in the Richard Hescox wraparound-illustrated dustwrapper. Housed in the black and dark brown cloth slipcase. Top edge dark brown. Burgundy satin bookmark. Illustrated endpapers. With a colour frontispiece and five black and white plates by Richard Hescox throughout, and with three black and white photographs, a black and white facsimile of the December 1960 'Mad' Magazine cover, and a black and white illustration 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 lightly rubbed, structurally sound slipcase, which has a couple of light marks to one side.

Issued in a deluxe limited edition of just 50 copies, from which this example is numbered 48 and signed by the illustrator Richard Hescox in blue ink on the tissue-guarded colophon. Facsimiles of Fritz Leiber's and Richard A. Lupoff's signatures are printed in black. Volume six 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 first edition (1977: Ace Books) received a nomination for the 1978 World Fantasy Award for 'Best Collection'. 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 four interviews and two essays by Leiber.