Ever since its magazine appearance ten years ago, Fritz Leiber's "Conjure Wife" has been esteemed as the definitive novelistic treatment of witchcraft in the modern world. A precisely balanced blend of fantasy and science fiction, of psychological novel and suspense melodrama, it stands on a plane with Leiber's own "Gather, Darkness!" or "Destiny Times Three"—which means all of the impact and excitement of the best pulp story-telling, with a literacy and subtlety advanced well beyond most of Mr. Leiber's colleagues.

H. H. Holmes, "Science and Fantasy," in New York Herald Tribune Book Review (© I.H.T. Corporation; reprinted by permission), December 21, 1952, p. 9.∗

Fritz (Reuter) Leiber (Jr.) 1910– Photograph by Jay Kay Klein