Blood Meridian, first edition. Random House, New York, 1985. First edition, first and only Random House printing with “First Edition” on the copyright page. Hardcover, 21,5 x 14,5 cm, 337 numbered pages. Publisher’s red paper-covered boards and darker red cloth spine, lettered in gilt. Dark red dustjacket by Richard Adelson, lettered in brighter red, featuring “The Phantom Cart” by Salvador Dalì on the front panel and a photo of the author by Mark Morrow on the back. Price of “$17.95”…
Suttree, first Italian edition Einaudi, Torino, 2009. First Italian edition, first printing with complete numberlines from 0 to 6 and from 2009 to 2012 on a colophon page bound after the contents page at the end of the book, which reads “Stampato…nel mese di Ottobre 2009”. Hardcover, 22,3 x 14,3 cm, 560 numbered pages. Publisher’s original greenish-grey cloth lettered in black on spine. White dustjacket lettered in black with a reproduction of the painting “Trout fishing, Lake St.John, Québec” by…
Suttree, first Modern Library edition. Random House, New York, 2002. First Modern Library edition, first printing with complete number line (246897531) on the copyright page. Hardcover, 19 x 12,5 cm., 471 numbered pages. Publisher’s grey cloth lettered in gilt on the spine with torchbearer logo embossed on front board and torchbearer motif on the endpapers. Silver and grayish blue dustjacket lettered in black with a photo of McCarthy by Marion Ettlinger on the front panel, a The Times Literary Supplement…
This is neither a Cormac McCarthy bibliography, as I am not a bibliographer, nor a critical essay, as I am not a scholar. The project started three years ago when I retired. Having more free time, I thought it would be good to catalogue my collection of McCarthy books. However, as I delved into them, I realized that many details about publication, first print runs, different issues, and so on were unknown, not based on strong sources, or even definitely wrong. Moreover, some of the people to whom the books were inscribed were similarly little known and had interesting stories worth telling.
So, I started digging into relevant archives mainly in the United States and England, speaking with McCarthy’s friends, publishers, and scholars, reading critical and biographical essays. What you find on this website is part of this research outcome. It aims just to share with McCarthy lovers, collectors, scholars and book dealers, information which sheds light on some little known aspects of McCarthy’s books history and about people whose lives crossed that of the author of Blood Meridian.
This is obviously a work in progress. In the next weeks, I will add information on all the over 250 items included in my McCarthy collection. Register with your email address to receive notifications about new contents added.
Lastly, English is not my mother tongue, so please be forgiving of any errors you may find in the text. Happy reading.
Some months ago, Peyton Gupton, a collector from Knoxville, sent me photos of a first edition of Suttree gorgeously inscribed by McCarthy to his friend Jim Long. The book had been acquired by the University of Tennessee in November, 2023 from Jim Long’s widow, Elaine. The inscription is one of the best I have ever seen and plays on the year McCarthy and Long first met and on the title of Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” published in the same year: “For Jim Long / without whose friendship / this book would not exist. / All best to you,…
Blood Meridian, first edition. Random House, New York, 1985. First edition, first and only Random House printing with “First Edition” on the copyright page. Hardcover, 21,5 x 14,5 cm, 337 numbered pages. Publisher’s red paper-covered boards and darker red cloth spine, lettered in gilt. Dark red dustjacket by Richard Adelson, lettered in brighter red, featuring “The Phantom Cart” by Salvador Dalì on the front panel and a photo of the author by Mark Morrow on the back. Price of “$17.95” on front flap and code “3/85” on the back flap. Housed in a handmade red cloth and leather clamshell box,…
The books by Cormac McCarthy entered the rare books trade and the collecting world very early. As far as we know, McCarthy’s friend Gary Goodman was among the first to trade signed copies of The Orchard Keeper and Outer Dark.
On February, 1971 Goodman, having noted a few copies of The Orchard Keeper offered by second hand bookstores for more than the original price, purchased from Random House forty-five copies of Outer Dark and five copies of The Orchard Keeper (probably from the second printing) at a reduced price. He got them signed by McCarthy and resold them at $ 12.50 each. McCarthy was known to a narrow circle at the time and modern firsts market was just starting. Nominal prices were many hundred times lower than those usual today.
A few days ago, just after Vanity Fair published the article about the love affair between Cormac McCarthy and Augusta Britt, the book dealer and researcher Scott Brown, complained that no photos of them together were provided to support the story. Here are two of them.
Three weeks ago Texas State University’s Wittliff Collections announced that it had expanded its archives dedicated to Cormac McCarthy, adding 36 banker’s boxes filled with his personal journals, photos, letters, and drafts of unpublished novels, coming from the McCarthy’s estate. Now, another key achievement is close to being completed: the university and Anne De Lisle are close to reaching an agreement for the letters that McCarthy wrote to his second wife. There is a strong chance that they will be…
Five letters by Cormac McCarthy to the writer and traveller, Lawrence Millman, dating from 1981 to 1983, are set to be offered for sale by the English book dealer Alexander Wochnik of First and Fine.
The Folio Society keeps on enriching its Cormac McCarthy collection. It just published All the Pretty Horses, which follows limited editions of The Road, Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men.