All The Pretty Horses, uncorrected proof of the first English edition
Picador, London, n.d.
Uncorrected proof of the first English edition. Softcover, 20 x13.6 cm, 301 numbered pages. Light blue wrappers lettered in black on the spine and front panel which reads “UNCORRECTED BOOK PROOF – NOT FOR RESALE”. The front panel features five blurb by Barry Lopez, Saul Bellow, Washington Post, Newsday, and John Banville. Back cover mentions “£14.99” as provisional price and “8th April 1993” as date of publication off the first English edition. (APG 006i)
CONDITION: near fine, a beautiful copy.
PROVENANCE: purchased from Post Mortem Books in 2010.
Issued in an unknown date, possibly 200 copies printed
The Picador Archive doesn’t include data about proofs anymore. However, Peter Straus, who was publisher at Picador from 1990 to 2002, recalls that no more than 200 copies were sent out. The figure seems compatible with a book whose first printing was 2,976 copies.
COLLECTING TOPICS: a scarce proof in my experience. As a matter of fact, it is by far scarcer than those issued for The Crossing and Cities of the Plain first English editions. Rare Book Hub doesn’t list any copies at auction. I have seen only a handful of them on the market. Around 2010 they went away for a price around $100-200. On 2020 another copy was still listed on Abe for $200. On January 2024 there were only two copies listed on the web, both of them in very good condition, for $450-500. As of August 2025, no copies were were available on Abebooks. A further issue with this proof is to find a copy in truly fine-near fine collectible condition. It can be challenging.
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