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As the Knopf’s archive remains currently not available to me, the most reliable source is Gary Fisketjon, editor of the book at Knopf. In two emails sent to me on February 18 and March 13, 2024, he confirmed the number of copies printed in the first run, contradicting the several previous estimates by scholars and dealers. Additionally, even if the announced date of publication was May 4, 1992, he supported the actual date of realizing was a week later on May, 11:

“Once the final manuscript of All the Pretty Horses was in hand, we distributed copies to our sales reps and discussed what first printing we would announce at the forthcoming sales conference. Part of that decision was based on how many copies Sonny and I believed we would sell in the first year or so. I was positive that number was 75,000 and Sonny wisely upped that to 90,000. But to ask our sales force to advance that many copies into a market that was scarcely aware of Cormac McCarthy would be absurd, even counterproductive. After I presented the book at that conference and the 25,000 copy first printing was announced, one of our best salesmen protested by saying it should be 100,000!  Sonny smiled and assured him that we’d end up printing far more than 100,000 but didn’t need to do so until the novel had taken over the marketplace and become a bestseller.  What we’d hoped for was exactly what happened. Horses was suddenly the hottest novel in the country we immediately started ordering new printings. The book was published on May 11, and by August it was already in its twelfth printing”.

The book won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. As per publisher’s data in The Crossing early proof, up to the end of 1993 the book had sold in hardcover 134,928 copies.                                                                                                                                                              

THE WINTERS OF MCCARTHY’S DISCONTENT AND THE BEGINNING OF URBAN ERA

All the Pretty Horses was the first of McCarthy’s books to be published by Knopf, a transition that propelled the author to worldwide success and significantly increased the value of his first editions. This marked the end of the “Erskine era” and the beginning of the “Amanda Urban era”, named after McCarthy’s new and highly influential literary agent.

However, this shift did not come out of the blue. It was the culmination of a decade-long, largely unspoken dissatisfaction McCarthy had with his first publisher, Random House.

The first signs of this discontent date back to the late 1970s, shortly after the publication of Suttree. Although Random House had paid McCarthy an advance for a new novel, and the Lindhurst Foundatio, thanks to the intervention of Robert Coles, had granted him a three-year, $20,000 fellowship, McCarthy faced growing financial difficulties that prevented him from dedicating himself entirely to writing. Suttree did not sell as well as expected, and by the late summer or fall of 1979, McCarthy expressed his frustrations to his friend and admirer, Coles.

Later, in a letter post marked October 9, 1979 to another friend, the writer Guy Davenport, he wrote: “I wonder if I shouldn’t find another publisher”. A month later, in another letter to Davenport post marked November 5, McCarthy elaborated: “I would have thought maybe Farrar Straus would have been a good home for you. I ask because I am still looking for a home myself. Albert [Erskine] will be retiring from Random House before not long and I don’t really have any other friends there”.

At the time, McCarthy did not even have a stable place to write. In December 1979, a friend found him temporary housing as a house-sitter in Lexington, for a woman who was traveling to Central America. He was also struggling financially, resorting to traveling with Richard Pierce in an attempt to sell a screenplay. In a letter to Orin Borsten, postmarked February 14, 1980, McCarthy bitterly referenced Faulkner’s “endless money problems.” It was clear he was speaking about himself as well:

“And for all his [Faulkner’s] loyalty to Random House you cant help but think that they could have done more for him. Albert [Erskine] told me he was surprised in later years to find out that Faulkner had had such worries with money, but where did he think the money could have come from?”.

McCarthy’s crisis found a temporary resolution only in December 1981, when, with the help of Saul Bellow and Shelby Foote, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship of $236,000, spread over five years. However, trust between McCarthy and Random House seemed permanently damaged.

By the mid-1980s, tensions resurfaced. In 1984, Jason Epstein, editorial director at Random House, opposed the inclusion of Suttree in the Vintage Contemporaries series, reinforcing his apparent lack of appreciation for McCarthy’s work. Additionally, by 1986, Albert Erskine had become seriously ill, retiring the following year. Meanwhile, McCarthy’s MacArthur Fellowship was nearing its end. With no strong support left at Random House, McCarthy was increasingly inclined to move on.

Between 1986 and 1987, McCarthy hired Amanda “Binky” Urban, a rising star in the literary agency world. A letter she sent to Dan Halpern, publisher of The Ecco Press, dated October 18, 1988, shows her actively working on McCarthy’s behalf (Amanda Urban to me, EPA B32.f12). She later recounted the story in a 2018 interview with Lisa Chase for The Cut:

“Lynn Nesbit hired me at ICM. While I was building my own list, she gave me a certain amount of spillover, as you do when you’re the rainmaker. One day, she threw a letter on my desk and said ‘You might want to follow up’. The letter read: ‘Dear Ms. Nesbit, I’ve never had an agent before, but I’m thinking now of getting one, and if you’re interested in talking to me, please call me before noon Rocky Mountain time at this phone number. Signed, Cormac McCarthy’. I’d read Suttree. I don’t think anybody reads Suttree and doesn’t think it’s an amazing book. So I called him up and said ‘I’m not Lynn Nesbit and I’m just starting out. But I’ll work really hard for you.” He said, in his gravelly voice, ‘Well, that sounds fine to me’”. 

Meanwhile, in 1987, Sonny Mehta left England to become President and Editor-in-Chief of Knopf. A fan of McCarthy’s work, Mehta had founded Picador in London, which would go on to publish McCarthy in the UK two years later. Urban recalled:

“I did some research and realized that none of his [McCarthy’s] books at Random House had ever sold more than 2,500 copies in hardcover. I called Sonny and asked: ‘Do you want to publish Cormac McCarthy? It seems to me that Random House isn’t doing a really great job by him’.  Sonny said, “I’d love that’”. 

When Urban called Jason Epstein at Random House, his response was unsurprising, confirming that the publisher no longer believed in McCarthy’s potential: “I can’t believe I’m picking up the phone to talk about an author who’s never sold more than 2,500 copies – told Epstein – of course you can move him over to Knopf.” (Lisa Chase, To Binky Urban, ‘Power’ Is a Male Word, in The Cut, October 16, 2018). 

McCarthy’s transition to Knopf was completed, and Gary Fisketjon, who became the second great editor of McCarthy’s career after Erskine, recounted the final steps of the move in an email to me dated February 18, 2024: 

“Sonny Mehta and I were great friends with comparable tastes and standards, and for those reasons he hired me at Knopf. He was aware of my passion for Cormac’s work and shared it himself. And his new manuscript seemed to both of us truly magnificent, so it was obvious that we should seize this opportunity and offer a guaranteed advance that reflected our expectation of vastly increased sales. The initial contract was for two novels but then expanded with a higher advance to three, since Cormac had finally determined the shape of The Border Trilogy. For us, Cormac’s comically dismal sales history was irrelevant. Sonny and I knew that we could rewrite that history”.

RECIPIENT: the book is inscribed to a woman who, at the time, ran the newspaper stand at La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe. La Fonda is the oldest hotel in Santa Fe, founded in 1922 and located in the historic Santa Fe Plaza. McCarthy was very fond of it, lived there for a while, and became a close friend of the owner, Sam Ballen, until Ballen’s death in 2007.

The close friendship with Toni lasted for a long time, as evidenced by the fact that McCarthy also inscribed first edition copies of The Crossing and Cities of the Plain to her, along with a batch of eight paperback editions of his novels.

As the inscribed copies of All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain were purchased together, it is unclear which book McCarthy’s note addressed to Toni belongs to.

REVIEW COPIES with a photo and publisher’s slip laid in have been noted.

COMPLIMENTARY COPIES with a publisher’s slip laid in have been noted.

LATER PRINTINGS: the book went into a second printing before publication, as stated on the copyright page. By April 1993, it had gone through twenty-three printings. A thirty-third printing was published in November 2009. All later printings, with the possible exception of the twenty-third, have the top text block edge stained in green.

The sixteenth printing, published in December 1992, features a second-issue dust jacket with a gilt circle, lettered in gilt-on-gilt, affixed to the front panel, reproducing an open book and reading around the perimeter: “NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER.”

The twenty-first printing, published in March 1993, features a third-issue dust jacket with a gilt circle, lettered in black, affixed to the front panel, reading:
“Winner / NATIONAL BOOK / AWARD / NATIONAL BOOK / CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD / for Fiction / 1992.”

The thirty-third printing, published in November 2009, features a later dust jacket priced at “$29.95” on the front flap.

BOOK CLUB EDITION: a BCE was printed from the thirteenth printing and states “Thirteenth printing, October 1992” on the copyright page. The dust jacket does not feature a price on the front flap.

LARGE PRINT EDITION: a large print edition was published in hardcover from the twenty-seventh printing in July 1999.

NOTABLE COPIES:

• DELISLE COPY. A signed copy owned by McCarthy’s second wife, Anne DeLisle, was auctioned at Bonhams on April 10, 2024, along with inscribed copies of The Crossing and Cities of the Plain. The books sold for $11,520.

• KIDWELL COPY. A very good copy, inscribed to McCarthy’s friend Bill Kidwell:
  “For Bill Kidwell / All the best / From your friend / Cormac.” Auctioned along with equally inscribed copies of The Crossing and Cities of the Plain at Heritage in 2013. The three books sold for $6,785. They were auctioned again in January 2025 at Christie’s, selling for $5,670.

• WOOLMER COPY. A fine complimentary copy with a publisher’s slip laid in, featuring the Borzoi imprint and “With the compliments of the author” in blue. Inscribed on the first half-title page in black felt pen: “For Howard / with all best wishes / From Cormac.”

• HOLLEY COPY. A well-worn copy inscribed to McCarthy’s longtime friends John and Lanelle Holley: “To John and Lanelle / With much love / Cormac”. Auctioned at Case Antiques in Knoxville on January 27, 2024, along with equally inscribed copies of The Crossing and Cities of the Plain. This copy is especially notable because John Holley, a horse expert, was asked by McCarthy to advise and revise sections of the novel. The three books sold for $4,064.

• MURRAY COPY. A near fine copy inscribed to McCarthy’s Irish friend and collector Philip Murray: “For Phillip [sic] / From Cormac / All best.” Offered by Fonsie Mealy in December 2019 and later, in November 2023, by Forum UK, in a lot including signed Knopf limited issue copies of The Crossing and Cities of the Plain.

• GONZALES COPY. A fine copy in a fine dust jacket, inscribed by McCarthy in 2017 to his friend and biographer Laurence Gonzales.

• FOOTE LETTERS. In 2021, Between the Covers offered for $3,600 three letters from historian Shelby Foote to Knopf editor Gary Fisketjon regarding his jacket blurb for All the Pretty Horses. Foote was a longtime admirer of McCarthy’s work.

FORGERIES: a forged copy of All the Pretty Horses was produced or at least sold by Stephen Pastore around 2013. It falsely presents itself as an “advance” copy, featuring a title page stating “1991” instead of “1992,” with a red stamp reading “Printer’s proof” on the first free endpaper. The dust jacket features entirely different horse photographs, only four blurbs on the back panel (omitting the Publishers Weekly blurb), a gray capital “A” instead of green, and a price marked as “TBD” on the front flap. The dust jacket verso includes the same red stamp as the first free endpaper, stating that this version was “rejected.” In a phone call, Chip Kidd, All the Pretty Horses dust jacket designer at Knopf, confirmed he had never seen this version before and that it was undoubtedly a fake. In reality, this forgery was created using a later printing copy, as evidenced by faint traces of green stain on the top text block edge. The title page was replaced, and a counterfeit dust jacket was added.

Around the same time, Pastore also attempted to sell a supposed working draft of the All the Pretty Horses dust jacket, featuring these same fraudulent horse images, typographic notations, and initials falsely attributed to Chip Kidd. Kidd denied ever seeing such a draft.

Shortly after Pastore’s death, a dealer connected to him, Ultra Premium Classic, offered a true first edition of All the Pretty Horses with a warm inscription to McCarthy’s longtime editor, Albert Erskine. Unfortunately, this was also a forgery.

COLLECTING TOPICS: flat-signed copies of All the Pretty Horses are among the easiest to find among McCarthy’s books. Rare Book Hub lists 35 signed copies compared to only seven inscribed copies. As a result, inscribed copies are more desirable. Special attention should be paid to the provenance of signed copies, as forgeries are common.