Publisher · founded 1977
Del Rey
Del Rey is the science fiction and fantasy imprint Ballantine created in 1977 for Judy-Lynn and Lester del Rey; much of its list first appeared in paperback, and it now sits within Penguin Random House.
- Editions tracked
- 122
- First editions
- 89
- Books
- 120
- Years
- 1979 to 2025
Del Rey is a publisher based in United States, founded in 1977. We track 122 editions it published between 1979 and 2025, 89 of them first editions across 120 books. How Del Rey marked its first editions is set out below, with a checker for the year on your title page.
About Del Rey
Del Rey is the science fiction and fantasy imprint launched by Ballantine Books in 1977 under Judy-Lynn del Rey and her husband, the author Lester del Rey, and now part of Penguin Random House.
Judy-Lynn del Rey joined Ballantine in 1973 from Galaxy magazine and hired Lester in 1975 to build a fantasy list. When Ballantine gave her an imprint of her own in 1977, she ran it and its marketing while Lester edited the fantasy authors. The first new novel under the name was Terry Brooks's The Sword of Shannara (1977), chosen by Lester as an epic with appeal to Tolkien readers; Random House issued the hardback and Ballantine a trade paperback at the same time, and it became one of the imprint's early best sellers. Judy-Lynn also secured the novelisation rights to Star Wars, the start of a long run of tie-in publishing. She died in 1986.
Authors associated with the imprint include Terry Brooks, Anne McCaffrey (the Dragonriders of Pern), Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Naomi Novik and Silvia Moreno-Garcia, whose Mexican Gothic appeared in 2020. Del Rey is now an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Bertelsmann.
Holding a copy? The first edition checker shows Del Rey's practice for the year on your title page.
Identification
How to identify Del Rey first editions
Authors
Books
Published by Del Rey
Frequently asked questions
How do I identify a Del Rey first edition?
How many Del Rey books does MyVolumes track?
We track 122 editions published by Del Rey, 89 of them first editions, across 120 books.
Where these facts come from
- Del Rey Books, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
- Judy-Lynn del Rey, JSTOR Daily (daily.jstor.org)
- The Sword of Shannara, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
- First Edition Identification by Publisher (Allen and Patricia Ahearn), ILAB, 2010 (ilab.org)
- The Best of Lester del Rey (publication record), Author Wars (authorwars.com)
- Collecting First Editions, AbeBooks (abebooks.com)
- Identifying Book Club Editions, IOBA (ioba.org)
- First Editions: Why, When and How, BookAddiction, 2024 (bookaddiction.co.uk)
Every fact on this page was checked against the sources listed. Checked 22 October 2026. Reviewed by Harriet Ellis; read how we check facts.