Stephen King "Salem's Lot" Slipcased First Edition, Second State DJ "Father Cody" Q37 Code [NF/Good]

Collect this excellent First Edition of "Salem's Lot" by Stephen King. It is one of his personal favorite books .

King has said, "In Salem's Lot, the thing that really scared me was not vampires but the town in the daytime, the town that was empty, knowing that there were things in closets, that there were people tucked under beds, under the concrete pilings of all those trailers. And all the time I was writing that, the Watergate hearings were pouring out of the TV, I was thinking about secrets, things that have been hidden and were being dragged out into the light."

Garden City. Doubleday, Copyright May 1975. Stephen King. "Salem's Lot" First Edition, Second State Dust-jacket. "Father Cody". 439 pages. Octavo with original half black cloth and original dust jacket. "First Edition" as stated on copyright page. Jacket design by Al Nagy. Jacket illustration by Dave Christensen. ISBN 0-385-00751-5. Printed in the U.S.A. Includes a custom matching slipcase.

A very original first edition from 1975, and one that is now almost 50 years old. All photos of actual item

A great opportunity to own the rare first edition of King's second novel, 'Salem's Lot. This is the haunting story of one New England village's sinister secrets. This is the first edition in the second-issue dust jacket. It is virtually impossible to find this edition with the first-issue dust jacket.

This is the Second State: The $8.95 price is factory clipped off and a price of $7.95 is printed on instead. Father Cody is referred to instead of Father Callahan on the dust-jacket. First Edition printing run was relatively small and only 20,000 copies.

Salem's Lot is unique because it has three states. The states refer to differences in the dustjacket due to errors in the printing of the dustjacket only. The hardcover book itself is the same across all three states. All three states show the words First Edition on the copyright page and code Q37 on the inner margin of page 439.

• First State - The front flap of the dust jacket has an unclipped price of $8.95 in the top right corner and the text refers to "Father Cody" instead of "Father Callahan" as found in later states/edition.
• Second State - The $8.95 is clipped off and a price of $7.95 is printed on instead. Father Cody is referred to instead of Father Callahan.
• Third State - The revised flap shows an unclipped price of $7.95 and the correct Father Callahan is printed.

Very few of the First issue dust jackets are known to exist. They had the incorrect printed price of $8.95 and the incorrect "Father Cody" on the front flap. 

This price mistake was quickly caught at the printer and prices were clipped off these early dust jackets. A new price of $7.95 was added but the incorrect “Father Cody” remained, making them the second-issue jackets. 

Third-issue jackets were completely reprinted, with the correct price and the priest’s name corrected to “Father Callahan.” Fantasy and Horror 6-203. Underwood & Miller 14. Text block bound in upside down (i.e., Doubleday imprint at spinehead).

Salem's Lot 

'Salem's Lot is a 1975 horror novel by American author Stephen King. It was his second published novel. The story involves a writer named Ben Mears who returns to the town of Jerusalem's Lot (or 'Salem's Lot for short) in Maine, where he lived from the age of five through nine, only to discover that the residents are becoming vampires. The town is revisited in the short stories "Jerusalem's Lot" and "One for the Road", both from King's story collection Night Shift (1978). The novel was nominated for the World Fantasy Award in 1976[1] and the Locus Award for the All-Time Best Fantasy Novel in 1987.

In two separate interviews in the 1980s, King said that, of all his books, 'Salem's Lot was his favorite. In his June 1983 Playboy interview, the interviewer mentioned that because it was his favorite, King was planning a sequel, but King has said on his website that because The Dark Tower series already continued the narrative in Wolves of the Calla and Song of Susannah, he felt there was no longer a need for a sequel. In 1987, he told Phil Konstantin in The Highway Patrolman magazine: "In a way it is my favorite story, mostly because of what it says about small towns. They are kind of a dying organism right now. The story seems sort of down home to me. I have a special cold spot in my heart for it!"[5]

'Salem's Lot has been adapted into a 1979 two-part miniseries directed by Tobe Hooper and a 2004 television miniseries directed by Mikael Salomon. A new feature film adaptation written and directed by Gary Dauberman has also been completed but is awaiting a release date.

The book is dedicated to King's daughter Naomi.

From the publisher

Reviews

Stephen King’s best-selling second novel “gave birth not only to gaggles of vampire stories… but also all kinds of creepy works in general…’Salem’s Lot, because of its genuineness, its verve, its originality, its willingness to reflect, expand and celebrate its sources, and, most importantly, its establishment of Stephen King… as a pioneer in a field ripe for re-invention, was germinal and originative of the entire boom in horror fiction” (Horror 100 Best 72). 

King’s ability, through the overlayering of seemingly irrelevant mundane details, to generate a sense of wrongness found its first full flowering in this novel” (Clute & Grant, 537). 

“A master storyteller.” —The Los Angeles Times

“Stephen King has built a literary genre of putting ordinary people in the most terrifying situations. . . . He’s the author who can always make the improbable so scary you'll feel compelled to check the locks on the front door.” —The Boston Globe

“Peerless imagination.” —The Observer (London)

“An unabashed chiller.” —Austin American Statesman

“[The] most wonderfully gruesome man on the planet.” —USA Today

“[King is] the guy who probably knows more about scary goings-on in confined, isolated places than anybody since Edgar Allan Poe.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Spine-tingling fiction at its best." —Grand Rapids Press

“A super exorcism. . . . Tremendous.” —Kirkus Reviews

“A novel of chilling, unspeakable evil.” —Chattanooga Times

Additional Information

The title King originally chose was Second Coming, but he later decided on Jerusalem’s Lot. The publishers, Doubleday, shortened it to the current title, thinking the author's choice sounded too religious.

Stephen King's second book, 'Salem's Lot (1975)--about the slow takeover of an insular hamlet called Jerusalem's Lot by a vampire patterned after Bram Stoker's Dracula--has two elements that he also uses to good effect in later novels: a small American town, usually in Maine, where people are disconnected from each other, quietly nursing their potential for evil; and a mixed bag of rational, goodhearted people, including a writer, who band together to fight that evil.

Simply taken as a contemporary vampire novel, 'Salem's Lot is great fun to read, and has been very influential in the horror genre. But it's also a sly piece of social commentary. As King said in 1983, "In 'Salem's Lot, the thing that really scared me was not vampires, but the town in the daytime, the town that was empty, knowing that there were things in closets, that there were people tucked under beds, under the concrete pilings of all those trailers. And all the time I was writing that, the Watergate hearings were pouring out of the TV.... Howard Baker kept asking, 'What I want to know is, what did you know and when did you know it?' That line haunts me, it stays in my mind.... During that time I was thinking about secrets, things that have been hidden and were being dragged out into the light."

The title King originally chose was Second Coming, but he later decided on Jerusalem’s Lot. The publishers, Doubleday, shortened it to the current title, thinking the author's choice sounded too religious.

Legacy

Salem's Lot was the first of King's books to have a huge cast of characters, a trait that would appear again in later books such as The Stand. The town of Jerusalem’s Lot would also serve as a prototype for later fictional towns of King's writing, namely Castle Rock, Maine and Derry, Maine.

King reused the character Father Callahan, the local priest whose faith falters in the dreadful presence of Barlow, in his The Dark Tower series. He appears in Wolves of the Calla, Song of Susannah, and The Dark Tower, and provides insights into his experiences after being exiled from 'Salem's Lot.

Salem's Lot was also the first novel by King in which the main character is a writer, a device he would use again in a number of novels and short stories. Mark Petrie's chant used for repelling the vampiric Danny Glick is reused in another King novel, It.

At one point, Mears explains his experience in the Marsten house, including seeing the body of the dead previous occupant. This is, obviously, impossible. However, Mears describes it as being a leftover or a remnant of what had happened there, just like the haunting of the Overlook Hotel in King's The Shining.

About the author

Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. Described as the "King of Horror", his books have sold more than 350 million copies as of 2006, and many have been adapted into films, television series, miniseries, and comic books. King has published over 65 novels/novellas, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, and five non-fiction books. He has also written approximately 200 short stories, most of which have been published in book collections.

King has received Bram Stoker Awards, World Fantasy Awards, and British Fantasy Society Awards. In 2003, the National Book Foundation awarded him the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He has also received awards for his contribution to literature for his entire bibliography, such as the 2004 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the 2007 Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. In 2015, he was awarded with a National Medal of Arts from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts for his contributions to literature.