The opening day is set: Monday, October 27. “It is possible that the first researchers could be looking through boxes with Post-it notes as labels!” jokes Katie Salzman, lead archivist at the Wittliff Collections. That day, after months of preparation, the new Cormac McCarthy papers will be available to scholars at Texas State University in San Marcos.

The papers were acquired by the Wittliff this past January from the McCarthy Estate, with the key involvement of Sarah Funke Butler of Funke Literary. They consist of early and late notes by McCarthy, documents, and decades of correspondence. They now join the papers McCarthy himself sold to the Wittliff in 2007. Salzman adds: “Not only is this material larger in size than the original McCarthy Papers we acquired in 2007 (and opened in 2009), but it is expansive in scope, providing a much fuller, richer look at the life and writing process of one of America’s greatest authors.”

These are not the only pieces of good news for McCarthy scholars and fans. The Wittliff is also close to acquiring more than one hundred letters Cormac wrote to his second wife, Anne DeLisle, beginning in 1966, when they were in Europe—he in France and she in England. Once organized and cataloged, scholars will be able to read McCarthy’s letters to Anne alongside Anne’s letters to him, offering insight into an important chapter of the writer’s private life.

Last but not least, Stacey Peebles and her team at the University of South Carolina have completed the cataloging of McCarthy’s personal library from his house near Santa Fe. The president of the Cormac McCarthy Society and her collaborators are preparing to launch a website listing and describing all the books from McCarthy’s library—what Peebles calls “just one fascinating find after another.” She explains: “The Cormac McCarthy Library Project will publish a searchable online database with information about each of the volumes McCarthy collected and used throughout his life. We are partnering with the University of South Carolina Press on this project, and the goal is to make the database Open Access—accessible to anyone, anywhere, without fees or restrictions.”

A companion monograph which Peebles is working on (the story of the project, how to use the database, more fascinating finds, subject areas in the library, etc.) will also be published by the University of South Carolina Press. As for the books themselves: those annotated by McCarthy will go to the Wittliff; a curated grouping of the physics, math and other books to demonstrate McCarthy’s range of intellectual interests, will be housed in a special Cormac McCarthy room at the Santa Fe Institute; and the rest will go to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

Unfortunately, several hundred of McCarthy’s books remain outside the catalog. These are the volumes found in storage in El Paso and purchased by Jud Burgess of Brave Books in 2024. Peebles notes: “I have reached out to Jud Burgess but haven’t heard back. My hope is still to include those books in the catalog.”

(August 15, 2025)