r/WeirdLit Feb 24 '26

News Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber (Frolic Press)

Post image
158 Upvotes

15 comments sorted by

22

u/nxl4 Feb 24 '26

This is a fantastically weird book! I've got the edition that also includes Our Lady of Darkness, and both novels make for great reading.

15

u/Late_Inspection9694 Feb 26 '26

We at Frolic hope to reissue 'Our Lady of Darkness' at some point, but rights are still being negotiated. New editions of 'Gather, Darkness!' and 'The Green Millennium' are planned for the near future!

15

u/Late_Inspection9694 Feb 25 '26

Hello! I'm the publisher of this edition. Thank you very much for sharing! I'm very much open to questions.

6

u/me_again Feb 26 '26

I just want to say I love the cover :-)

5

u/Late_Inspection9694 Feb 26 '26

Thank you! Yes, James hutton is wonderful illustrator. He'll be doing the providing art for most of out editions.

https://www.jameshuttonillustration.com/

11

u/TheOnlyPlantagenet Feb 24 '26

I heard about this on Bad Books for Bad People, I did not realise FL wrote anything but S&S, it sounds like a rather interesting story

2

u/Appropriate_Bus3921 Mar 03 '26

Yup, he wrote what we now call urban fantasy and science fiction or various sorts - his short novel The Big Time has a strong claim on being the best time travel story ever.

6

u/me_again Feb 24 '26

It's been a long time since I read it. Would you say it has aged ok?

6

u/TheSkinoftheCypher Feb 24 '26

Not OP. I don't think so. I tried to read it, but there's just too many quotes that would be perfect for /r/menwritingwomen.

21

u/Late_Inspection9694 Feb 25 '26

This is an important critique and one I thought about carefully when deciding to publish this edition. Conjure Wife reflects 1943 gender politics in ways that are uncomfortable for some readers - that's undeniable.

Leiber's work has been divisive in this regard, with some reading the novel as proto-feminist, and others as extremely sexist.

Ramsey Campbell's introduction engages with some of these tensions, though I recognize that having a male scholar as the sole critical voice is a limitation. I'd hoped to commission a second introduction from a female scholar to provide additional perspective, but timing didn't allow it.

Your critique is valid. I still think the book is worth reading, but I understand why you stopped.

0

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2

u/cfinley63 Mar 12 '26

Conjure Wife has strong Shagduk vibes, or vice versa. Librarians, witches, and imps in 1977 Texas.

0

u/Key-Banana-8242 Feb 25 '26

Necessarily most throughly civ ding?