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I couldn’t find out the first print run because the folder regarding The Orchard Keeper in the Andre Deutsch archive held at the University of Tulsa is surprisingly empty. Following the first print run of later McCarthy’s books English first editions though, it most probably was not exceeding 3,000 copies. The date of publication is mentioned in the advance and review copies.

Photo-offset of the first American edition repeating the typographical error on page 97 (Woolmer).

ADVANCE PROOF COPIES are noted. APG describes them as such: “Advance proof copy of the first English edition of author’s first book, using sheets of the first American edition, perfect-bound into a proof state of the English dust jacket (jacket printed by Andre Deutsch). Octavo pictorial wrappers, pp. [iv], [247], green top edge. The verso of the front cover (i.e. verso of front panel of dust jacket) stating (printed in bold purple lettering, by the publisher): ‘For Publication/Mar 1966/Andre Deutsch Ltd. Finished Jacket Will Be Varnished.’. Obviously this advance copy was prepared prior to printing of the English sheets, as it uses the sheets of the American first edition, which have been perfect-bound into the English proof dust jacket” (APG 001c). The copy mentioned by APG was issued by Waiting for Godot Books on their catalog of April, 2004. Another copy, if it is not the same, was in the Murray collection and is now owned by an English collector. He provided me some photos of it and, as far as I can say, it is genuine. All the other large McCarthy collections, included Woolmer’s one, lack it. So, at the end of the day, I am aware of only one or two copies being in existence. No signed or inscribed copies were noted. Rare.

REVIEW COPIES: advance review copies are noted. They have a stamp reading “FOR PUBLICATION ON 10 MARCH 1966 ANDRE DEUTSCH LTD” in purple ink on the inside of the dust-jacket. They are notable scarce.

FORGERIES: at least two fake copies does exist. One is very similar to the genuine advance proof and is detectable by the fact that its top edge is unstained instead of being in pale green, as it should be given that it was produced from the American first printing sheets. It is in my hand and was sold on the market by Stephen Pastore in 2014.

The other forgery was detected by the book dealer Scott Brown. It is more simple and very different by the genuine proof issued by Deutsch. Its models are genuine American proof copies of The Orchard Keeper and Child of God. It features “Printer’s proof” and the publisher’s name stamped on the front wrapper.

PAPERBACK EDITION: Twenty-eight years after this first edition, on March 4, 1994, Picador published the first English paperback edition priced at £5.99 with a first printing of 8,016 copies (Peter Straus; Woolmer).

RECIPIENT: McCarthy inscribed the book to James Farah and his then wife Cynthia Weber Farah Haines. Jim, born in 1947, is the heir of one of the biggest clothing manufacture company in the United States. It was his Lebanese grandfather Mansour, a dry goods merchant and hay broker who founded Farah in El Paso, Texas, in 1920. In the Seventies the Farah became famous because their factories were shaken by one of the largest and longest strikes of chicanos workers who were successful in claiming for higher salaries, better work conditions and the right to be represented by a Union. In 1987 Jim left the family business to build a career in the real estate in New York and Brooklyn. He preserved his bond with El Paso though, where he met and became friend of McCarthy.

Cynthia Weber Farah Haines is a notable photographer, film critic, writer and figure of cultural life in the Southwest. She was born in Long Island on June 2,1949, but moved to El Paso with her family when she was ten. She obtained a bachelor’s degree in Communications at the Stanford University in 1971, then moved back to El Paso where she got married with James Farah on January 12, 1972. They had two daughters before divorcing in 1992. Later on Cynthia got married with Jim Haines, a brilliant executive manager of Kansas Gas & Electric, Western Resources and, from 1996 to 2001, CEO of El Paso Electric Co. Cynthia Haines moved to Lawrence in March 2003 with her husband who was named president and chief executive officer of Topeka-based Westar Energy. She was on a leave of absence from her teaching post in the Theatre Arts and Film Department at the University of Texas-El Paso but spent a lot of time commuting to her job in Texas. She lives still in Lawrence today. Among Cynthia Farah Haines books there are a work on El Paso murals, (“Colors on Desert Walls: The Murals of El Paso”, 1997) and  the wonderful “Literature & Landscape Writers of the Southwest” (1988) who collects fifty amazing photographic portraits of “writers with a strong sense of place and that place is the Southwest”, captioned by the writers theirselves. 

Robert Draper quotes both Jim Farah and Cynthia Farah as El Paso friends of McCarthy around the Eighties and the beginning of Nineties: “Nowadays McCarthy is close to a few other local writers, notably University of Texas at El Paso writer in residence Rick DeMarinis, McCarthy’s neighbor. But far from resembling the denizens who slouch around tables at Elaine’s in New York, his circle of friends is indicative of El Paso’s oddball jet set. They include attorney and airplane collector Malcolm McGregor; clothing industry heir Jim Farah and his photographer wife, Cynthia; U.S. magistrate Janet Ruesch; sculptor James Drake; rancher Ralph “Punko” Lowenfield; and local rare-book dealer Irving Brown of HI Books” (Robert Draper, “The Invisible Man” in Texas Monthly, July, 1992). So, it could be seen as weird that Cynthia Farah Haines didn’t include a Cormac McCarthy’s photo in her book “Literature and Landscape”. In a talk on the phone with me on November, 2023, she, confirming the warm friendship with McCarthy, explained that she had taken shots of him but decided to keep them out of her book “to respect his deep sense of privacy”. Indeed, an unpublished photo of McCarthy by Cynthia Farah is hold at Center for Southwest Research of the University of New Mexico. The longtime and loyal friendship of Cynthia and McCarthy survived the divorce  between her and Jim Farah. It is worth to note that the character of an attractive young woman who is among the friends of the protagonist Robert Western in The Passenger, is named Bianca Pharaoh (see for example The Passenger, Knopf, 2022, p. 24). The last name is clearly inspired by Cinthia’s. 

This copy of The Orchard Keeper is not the only book inscribed by McCarthy to Cynthia Farah Haines to have appeared on the market. A near fine copy, with the remainder mark, of the first printing of Blood Meridian inscribed to her was sold in 2001 by Ken Lopez (Catalog 117, September 2001, 217).

PROVENANCE: From the collection of I.D. “Nash” Flores III. Purchased at Heritage Auctions in 2014. Ignacio Desiderio “Nash” Flores III was a banker and a business man born in 1943 and raised in Floresville, Texas, a town founded by his family on their Spanish land grant. Among the many appointments he held, there was that of CEO of FGR Foods, the award winning franchisee of Au Bon Pain and Uno Due Go that he co-founded. He was an enthusiast of art and literature. He dedicated many years to the Dallas Museum of Art and, on the side, he amassed an interesting collection of first editions. In spite of the books by McCarthy was just a part of it, some of them are of great interest. His collection indeed, aside from this copy of first English edition of The Orchard Keeper, included The Orchard Keeper and Blood Meridian first editions inscribed to John Sheddan and the letters between McCarthy and the writer John Fergus Ryan now held at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Flores passed away on October 20, 2013.

COLLECTING TOPICS: signed or inscribed copies of this edition are very hard to find, association copies more so. Other than this I have seen only one of them, near fine in a very good dust-jacket, signed in a later hand, listed by Swan’s Fine Books on 2023 at $ 12,500. Copies signed on a bookplate are noted but they are not issued as such by the publisher.  The Rare Book Hub registers only this copy sold at auction. Rare.

The stained green top edge of a genuine copy of The Orchard Keeper English advance proof (courtesy of an English collector)

The stamp on the inside front wrapper (courtesy of an English collector)

The advance proof copy title page (courtesy of an English collector)

The two known forged versions of The Orchard Keeper English advance proof (courtesy of Scott Brown)