I Am Legend (6/54) - Signed Walker Hardcover (1970)

This is it. The 1970 Walker hardcover was the first edition of I Am Legend that I read (in a single sitting, on a Saturday afternoon when I was around 12 years old).

This was the first English-language hardcover edition of Matheson's novel, published 16 years after the Gold Medal paperback original. Walker's books were in large part targeted to libraries, which is why most copies you'll find for sale (and every one of the six copies in the Archive) is an ex-library edition. 

The cover art is by celebrated artist Jack Gaughan — perhaps depicting our protagonist Robert Neville haunted by artistic representations of the evils tormenting him (by no means the traditional vampires that appear in the book). Gaughan did a number of covers for Walker in a similar style for classic science-fiction novels, so a case could be made that he had created a bunch of artwork, and someone in Walker's art department decided which piece fit best with each book. We'll probably never know.

As the artwork is definitely not a literal representation of anything in the book, it wasn't my favorite cover at the time (back when I only knew of two versions) — whereas Tony Gleeson's artwork, while not depicting a specific scene, at least provided a clearer representation of a stake-wielding Neville and his vampiric foes. I've come to appreciate Gaughan's cover more over the years, and always keep one eye open, in case the original illustration turns up.

My copy is one of a small handful of editions in the Archive that are personally inscribed to me. I have a number that are just signed, but the most important editions were signed to me in person.

At the time I was working in a bookstore, I was frankly disappointed that the book had been out of print for a number of years (the intermittently available Science Fiction Book Club edition notwithstanding). I reached out to Walker to see if they still held the hardcover reprint rights to the novel, and much to my surprise, they replied. 

Even today, I'm surprised that Walker was still around as late as 1989. I've held onto that letter for all these years (in my signed Walker hardcover). Even though we had started down the path of publishing books at Deadline Press by then, I didn't think we were in any position to approach Matheson about reprinting his novel (and it was only a few years before Gauntlet would publish a 40th anniversary signed/limited hardcover edition). 

But it confirmed that Don Congdon Associates was still representing Matheson, and so as questions came to me in subsequent years, I was able to direct them accordingly. 

Be sure to come back next Monday, when I'll share yet another item from my I Am Legend collection.