8vo. Numerous illustrations by Ralph Steadman. Original cloth-backed boards with cover pictorially blind-stamped; original unclipped dust jacket (light sunning to spine); quarter green morocco folding case gilt.

FIRST EDITION. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas has its genesis in two road trips Thompson took with attorney and activist Oscar Zeta Acosta in the spring of 1971. After the first trip, Thompson spent 36 hours "feverishly writing in my notebook" about their experiences. The book received a mixed reception upon release but many predicted that it would become an important piece of American literature; it has since been called "a custom-crafted study of paranoia, a spew from the 1960s and - in all its hysteria, insolence, insult, and rot - a desperate and important book..." (Books of the Century, pp.278-80).