Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series
story list & collections
by Fritz Leiber

The thirty-seven stories comprising Fritz Leiber's great series Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were written over a half-century (from 1934 through 1988), and not in their chronological order — both attributes of Goethe's composition of Faust. Leiber's two heroes, and their wonderful high and low adventures, among allies and foes in the fabulous city of Lankhmar of the dubious land of Nehwon, are great exemplars of the fantastic in literature.
  

It is with the greatest interest that I learn of your plans for revising the "Gambit", & I shall surely welcome the new version when it reaches me. ...

Your notes on Fafhrd's & the Mouser's possible antecedents are extremely interesting — & I wish good old Two-gun Bob Howard were alive to see this echo of his virile & adventurous heroics. Some day I surely hope a great deal of the Fafhrd cycle will get into print — leading off with "Adept's Gambit".

H. P. Lovecraft
to Fritz Leiber, 25 January 1937
[Lovecraft had only six more weeks to live.]

Fritz Leiber and H. P. Lovecraft:
Writers of the Dark
edited by Ben J. Szumskyj and S. T. Joshi
  

Leiber's stories mostly appeared first in magazines, beginning in John W. Campbell's Unknown in 1939. Over the years, they have been collected and re-collected in books bylined Leiber, as well as anthologized. One, The Swords of Lankhmar, is itself the length of a novel and usually appears as a separate book.

Here we provide an overall sequence as the stories ideally should be read, and as they appear in the common seven-book set. Additionally we list inclusions in Leiber's other story collections: it's not too critical that you read them in order. The first readers of most of these stories just enjoyed them as they came — and then re-read them in the complete set. We mention some omnibus editions, but do not attempt to provide all appearances in general Leiber collections, or multi-author anthologies.
  

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser taken as a whole is one of the greatest works of modern fantasy. Should you, however, happen upon a story or two and not care for them, do try a couple of others. Fritz Leiber gives us a stunning range and depth of fantastic realism here; and if the style is not so various as that of Faust, nor the landscape cover a spectrum as great a witch-flight as from "Auerbach's Tavern in Leipzig" to the "Classical Walpurgis Night", still Fafhrd and the Mouser can show you a merry ride.
  

© 2009 Robert Wilfred Franson