The Essential Ellison: A 50-Year Retrospective was first published by Morpheus International in 1987 and has been revised and expanded in subsequent editions (the 35-year retrospective in 1987, the 50-year retrospective in 2001). It is the single-volume collection designed to represent the full range of Ellison’s work — stories, essays, screenplays, teleplays, and journalism selected from a career that produced over 1,700 published works.
The collection includes most of Ellison’s best-known stories — “Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman,” “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream,” “A Boy and His Dog,” “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs,” “Jeffty Is Five,” “Shatterday” — along with lesser-known pieces that demonstrate the breadth of his interests. The essays range from political commentary to literary criticism to autobiographical confession, all written in Ellison’s distinctive voice: combative, passionate, funny, and relentlessly personal.
The book also serves as a kind of autobiography, arranged chronologically and interspersed with Ellison’s notes about the circumstances of each piece’s composition — notes that are often as entertaining and revealing as the fiction itself. Taken together, the stories and notes create a portrait of a writer who regarded every piece of work as a battle against complacency, mediocrity, and the human tendency to accept things as they are.
Collecting The Essential Ellison
First edition (Morpheus International, 1987): Large-format hardcover.
Market values:
- First edition (35-year retrospective): $40–$120
- 50-year retrospective (2001): $30–$80
- Signed editions: $100–$300