The Road, first limited and first illustrated edition, lettered issue. Suntup Press, Irvine, Ca, 2019. Limited edition, lettered issue, one of 26 copies lettered A-Z, this being copy X. Hardcover, 23.5 x 15.5 cm, 241 numbered pages.
- All Posts
- Books
Autograph letter signed to George Spencer. El Paso, TX, 1988. Autograph letter to George Spencer, from El Paso, Texas. Two pages on yellow ruled paper, 18.5 x 12.9 cm., written on one side only in black felt pen.
The Road, first limited and first illustrated edition, numbered issue. Suntup Press, Irvine, Ca, 2019. Limited edition, numbered issue, one of 250 copies this being copy ..… Hardcover, 23.5 x 16 cm, 241 numbered pages. Publisher’s beige rough Japanese cloth with print of the The Road engraving by Richard Wagener inset into front cover.
A Few Words to Start
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.
FOCUS
2024-12-26
Some months ago, Jud Burgess, a book dealer who runs Brave Books in El Paso, made an amazing discovery. He found in a storage several boxes of books that had once been owned by Cormac McCarthy. The author of Blood Meridian, had lived in El Paso for nearly 25 years, in and out. Therefore, the Texas town promises to be a goldmine for collectors and book hunters.
BOOK COLLECTION
The Road, broadside. Suntup Press, Irvine, Ca, 2019. First edition, only printing. Text and wood engraving letterpress printed in black on cream deckle-edged moldmade stock, measuring 17.5 x 25 cm.
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.
- All Posts
- News
The first graphic novel based on a Cormac McCarthy’s novel is already available. The Road was adapted by Manu Larcenet and has been published in French as “La Route” on March, 29 both in hardcover by Dargaud and paperback by Points. It was followed on April, 12 by the Italian version published by Coconino Press. The English version is expected to be out in hardcover on September, 17 (Abrams ComicArt).
Not just one, but two McCarthy’s biographies are expected to be published in 2025. Laurence Gonzales, author of best sellers like “Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies and Why” and “Flight 232” and Mccarthy’s friend at Santa Fe Institute, is working on another biography which want to be “about Cormac as a person more than the literary giant he was”.
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 .
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.