Cities of the Plain, first English edition
Picador, London, 1998
First English edition, first printing with complete numberline 135798642 on the copyright page. Hardcover, 22.3 x 14 cm, 291 numbered pages. Publisher’s black cloth lettered in silver on the spine. Text-block top edge unstained. Dark red endpapers. Copyright page reads: “Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatam plc, Chatam, Kent”. The last page features the dedication already appeared in the first US edition
Publisher’s white dust jacket lettered in black and brick red with a photograph of a detail of “Wheat Stubble Fire, Eastern Colorado” by Larry Schwarm on the front panel. Price of “£16.99” on front flap, photograph of McCarthy by Marion Ettlinger on back flap. The back cover featured five praise for All the Pretty Horses by Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph; Geoff Dyer, Guardian; Andrew Clements, Financial Times; Stephen Amidon, Sunday Times; Blake Morrison; and two praise for The Crossing, by Erica Wagner, The Times; John Banville, Irish Times.
CONDITION: very good in very good dustjacket.
Published on June 19, 1998, at £16.99, in a print run of 16,810 copies.
In spite of the advance reader edition for this title suggests as tentative publication date June, 15, the Picador Archive shows that it was actually published on June, 19, following the true first edition published by Knopf by 4 days.
Cities of the Plain first print run was the highest of those for titles by McCarthy in England, including The Road, The Passenger and Stella Maris.
COLLECTING TOPICS: Unsigned copy are common. Signed or inscribed copies are not, being scarcer than those of All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing firsts English editions. Recently, a complete run of the three volumes of the Border Trilogy published by Picador, with each volume signed, was auctioned by PBA Galleries in the Fall 2023 and sold for $4,375. Signatures looked like genuine but the provenance was only “purchased from a reliable English bookseller”. Not enough, indeed. As of August 2025 only two copies were available on the web.
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