Possible early Stephen King works sold

LISBON FALLS – Copies of the Lisbon High School student newspaper from the mid-1960s containing two original stories have become collectors items.

That’s because the writer of the quirky tales is listed as “Steve King.”

The stories, titled “The 43rd Dream” and “Code Name: Mousetrap,” are believed to be among the earliest published works of Stephen King. The best-selling author grew up in Durham and attended Lisbon High at that time. The old newspaper copies were discovered last year by retired English teacher Prudence Grant when she cleaned out her file cabinet. She sold the copies on the online auction site eBay, where they fetched between $400 and $800 per copy.

The stories recently came to public attention through a new CD-ROM called “The Complete Guide to the Works of Stephen King,” which went on sale Thursday, that catalogs everything King ever has written.

The guide’s three authors, all based in Australia, found the two stories by tracking down various King collectors, who had bought the stories from Grant.

“We were just trying to find everything he had ever written, and in the process, bring some things to light people had never heard of,” said Rocky Wood, one of the guide’s authors, from his home in Melbourne, Australia. “I think these stories fall into that category.” Grant never had King in class, but she was an adviser for the school newspaper, The Drum, which King wrote for. Grant remembers him as “a goofy guy who went on to do far, far, far better than any of us.”

King graduated from Lisbon High School in 1966 and went on to become one of the world’s best-known authors.

Grant, who buys and sells antiques, said she didn’t know what to do with the stories when she found them, but figured they were her property, her own copies, so she decided to put them on eBay, the online auction site.

She asked for bids of $15 or more for the four copies of “Code Name: Mousetrap,” a story about a young man breaking into a supermarket, then being chased by a soup can display and a giant mousetrap. Within minutes, the bids were in the hundreds and all four were sold for $400 to $500 apiece.

Later, she sold her single copy of “The 43rd Dream” for $800. That story is about a high school student dreaming about the Batmobile, Captain Hook, Jack the Ripper and John Wilkes Booth.

“I had no idea how many people would be interested,” said Grant, of Lisbon Falls.

As Wood was researching his King guide in Maine last fall, he started to hear about the stories from The Drum and eventually tracked down the collectors in various parts of the country.