Printed in offset from the American edition. Chatto & Windus paid Random House fees of $250. The signing of contract was handled on McCarthy’s side by the agencies of Candida Donadio in New York and legendary Deborah Rogers in London. It stated an advance of £600 and 10% royalties on the first 2,500 copies sold. 

The sources of the date of publication and the first print run are the Random House records and the Chatto & Windus Ltd. Archives. 

On the Chatto & Windus side, the publication was handled by Christopher MacLehose, a prominent figure in United Kingdom publishing industry and in the diffusion of McCarthy’s work there, who then was editorial director of the publishing house. He had read the first two novels by McCarthy published in England by Andre Deutsch and had been impressed. While traveling in the United States in 1974 he was able to lay the foundation for purchasing the right of Child of God. He pushed Chatto to publish it although sales and reviews of McCarthy’s first two books published in England by Deutsch had been unsatisfactory. In a letter dated 7th November, 1974 to Nick Austin at Panther books he explained: “McCarthy’s record here doesn’t match his reputation in America. His two earlier books were […] not sold to paperback and they are now out of print. We will publish our edition […] next year and are very confident of mending his fortunes here”. Similarly, although in a more cautious note, in an internal memo dated 6.V.74 he wrote: “We may […] undermine the suggestion that this is ‘Faulkner for the illiterate’. We should anticipate a modest hardcover sale and a sale to paperback of £750-£1250” (Chatto). In an email sent to me in 2024 MacLehose recalled that “the level of violence certainly alarmed the older members of the staff” but “everyone in the house recognized his quality”. 

Sales didn’t match expectations though. In spite of titanic efforts by MacLehose, all the main English publishing houses declined to buy paperback rights. Even Picador, which later became McCarthy’s publisher for the United Kingdom, refused. All that MacLehose could obtain was an option to publish a paperback edition by Penguin Books for £100. As for the critics, they were so negative that MacLehose was in doubt about whether he should send them to McCarthy. He requested advice about it from Candida Donadio, the writer’s American agent. In a letter to her dated 2nd June, 1975, MacLehose poured out: “You need scarcely wonder how bitterly disappointing this has been, or the sales have been”. To make the situation worse, South Africa banned the book on moral grounds. On April 6, 1977, MacLehose informed Deborah Rogers that Penguin would not proceed with the paperback edition of Child of God and that “the sales of it have now dwindled to such level that we feel we must remainder it” (Chatto).    

DUSTJACKET: the artwork by Graham Palfrey-Rogers is in a very different style from the plain design of the American first edition. It caused a furious reaction by Albert Erskine who wrote to Christopher MacLehose at Chatto & Windus on December 9, 1974: “I have never seen a book jacket more inappropriate to the book it is intended for. I might add that within a half hour of receiving it, I showed it to seven or eight colleagues, all of whom gave various expressions of surprise and disgust […]. What worries me most of all is what the author’s reaction will be”. But McCarthy wasn’t disgusted at all. He wrote to MacLehose: “I don’t share my Random House editor’s alarm. The cover is a bit garish, but I enjoyed it, and if it will help sell the book then by all means etc.” (Chatto).                                                                                                       

UNCORRECTED PROOFS: like Andre Deutsch for the first two novels by McCarthy, Chatto & Windus didn’t produce uncorrected proofs for this title but got from Random House twelve first American edition copies “for promotional and publicity purposes” (letter dated 16 May, 1974 from Susan Daniell of Subsidiary Rights Department at Chatto & Windus to Jim Silberman at Random House held in Chatto & Windus Ltd. archives). I have not came across any such copy.

FORGERIES: one proof copy of Child of God’s first English edition was in the Murray collection, and sold at first in the Fonsie Mealy December 10, 2019, auction and later at the Forum UK auction on November 30, 2023, along with an Outer Dark’s English proof copy with the same provenance. The Forum UK catalog describes them as “rare, we can trace no other examples on the market”. That’s good because, even if they sold for £1,440, both of them are forgeries traded by Stephen Pastore in 2013.   

PAPERBACK EDITION: on March 3, 1989, almost twenty years after this first edition, Picador published simultaneously with the hardback first of Blood Meridian the first English paperback edition priced at £3.99 with a first printing of 7,500 copies (Peter Straus; Woolmer).                                                                                      

NOTABLE COPIES:

DELISLE COPY. First English edition, in very good condition, inscribed by McCarthy to his second wife Anne DeLisle: “For Annie, with love, Cormac”. The book sold for $6,144 at Bonhams on April 10, 2024, along with other materials coming directly from DeLisle. 

MURRAY COPY. Part of the Philip Murray collection and inscribed to him. It was sold at first by Fonsie Mealy auctioneer in December, 2019. Later on, it was offered by an English book dealer at the end of 2022 and sold for $4,500.

COLLECTING TOPICS: genuine signed or inscribed copies have appeared on the market in the past years. I came across two of them other than this and the copies mentioned above (which are the only two sold at auction following Rare Book Hub). The first was inscribed on the winter 1992-1993 to an American bookseller and sold at Forum UK auction on November 30, 2023, for $3,500. A second copy just signed and without provenance was offered in 2023 by an American bookseller for $5,000 and was still there in August, 2024. Scarce signed or inscribed.