Child of God, first English edition. Chatto & Windus, London, 1975. First English edition, first and only printing with ”1975” on the title page. Hardcover, 20,5 x 13,5 cm., 238 numbered pages. Publisher’s black paper covered boards with gilt lettering on spine. Ivory dust jacket lettered in pale blue and black with price of “£ 2.50 net” on the front flap. Design and two illustrations on the front and back panels by Graham Palfrey-Rogers. Housed in a blue cloth and…
Child of God, first edition Random House, New York, 1974. First edition, first and only printing with “First Edition” on the copyright page. Hardcover, 21.5 x 14.6 cm, 197 numbered pages. Publisher’s red paper-covered and black cloth board, lettered in gold on the spine and with the initials “CMcC” embossed on the front panel. Black dust jacket by Muriel Nasser, lettered in red, yellow, and olive green with a price of “$5.95” on the front flap and code “1/74” on…
Outer dark, first English edition André Deutsch, London, 1970 First English edition, first and only printing with “First Published 1970” on the copyright page. Hardcover, 20,5 x 13,5 cm., 238 numbered pages. Publisher’s black paper-covered, lettered in silver on the spine. Two-tone blue dust jacket by Michael Heawood, lettered in white with price of “£ 1.80p net UK only" and “36s” on the front flap. The back panel shows a blue tinted photo of McCarthy by Joe Blackwell. It is…
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.
Suttree, first English edition Chatto & Windus, London, 1980. First English edition, first and only printing with “1980” on the title page. Hardcover, 21,5 x 14,6 cm., 471 numbered pages. Publisher’s cream paper covered and black cloth boards lettered in gilt on the spine, with gilt initials “CM” on the front panel and the Random House imprint at spine foot. This English issue is made from the American sheets, with Chatto & Windus title and copyright pages inserted in. Dustjacket with a photograph by Ronald Gunn on the front panel, with price of “£6.95 net in U.K. only” on the…
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.
The annual conference about McCarthy will be hold in Knoxville, Tennessee, the city where Cormac grew up, on October 3-5, 2024. The conference place is the Crowne Plaza Hotel in downtown Knoxville and author Ron Rash will be the keynoter. For every information go to https://www.cormacmccarthysociety.com . Discover more from The MCCARTHYIST Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email. Type your email… Subscribe
A lucky and careful bookseller from El Paso, Jud Burgess who runs Brave Books there, has found and purchased over 1,500 books previously owned by Cormac McCarthy. They were left in a storage when McCarthy in 2001 moved to Tesuque, 10 miles north of Santa Fe.
The McCarthy’s readers and fun community on Reddit, as far as I know the largest in existence, has overcome 30,000 registered people.