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On June 17, 1964 Albert Erskine wrote to Sidney Jacobs of Random House design department explaining he wanted “to make a paperbound edition to send out for comment long before we go to press with our jacket, in the hope of getting some authoritative support for it”. Later that month Erskine clarified that he wanted “the limited paperback promotion edition” available within Christmas at the latest. This was unusual for Erskine. The Orchard Keeper was just the second book he sent out advance copies of, the first being Lowry’s Under The Vulcan. “Lowry’s Under the Volcano in 1944, was the first book I sent out bound advance galleys of to booksellers, reviewers and critics. I believed in it that strongly. The Orchard Keeper, 21 years later, was the second”, Erskine told in 1985 to the Canadian writer Leon Rooke (Albert Erskine Papers; Luce, pp. 73-75). The advance edition was printed in roughly 100 copies and ready to be shipped to influential figures of literary world on January 4, 1965. Among the recipients were Shelby Foote, Kay Boyle, Michael Millgate, Ralph Ellison, Robert Penn Warren, James Michener, Warren Beck, Malcolm Cowley, John Hersey, John Longley, Truman Capote, Karl Shapiro, Eudora Welty, Saul Bellow (King; Luce).

Copies with unsigned card by Erskine were noted. It is uncertain though if the card was originally laid in the book or put there later.

GALLEY PROOFS: Galley proofs issued earlier than this advance reading edition did exist, probably in different states, but they have never appeared on the market. They were sent between September and November, 1964 to some reviewers and magazines editors to arrange the publication of a novel’s excerpt. An early state of the bound galleys, still carrying the novel working title “Toilers at the Kiln” was sent on September to John E. Palmer at The Yale Review. Others were sent to Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, Kenyon Review, Sewanee Review, Glamour Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar which makes at least seven copies known to have existed.

Howard Woolmer wrote a note now hold in his papers in the Wycliff Collection: “Albert Erskine told me in 1990 that about one hundred copies of the reproduced typescript were sent out for advance blurbs. These preceded the bound proof. I was not able to locate a copy”. Erskine (or Woolmer) clearly got mixed up with the one hundred copies of the paperbound advance edition which were sent out to get blurbs indeed. Recipients suggest instead that the galley, issued in a much less number, were sent out to get book excerpts published in advance of the first trade edition. The Cormac McCarthy’s papers at the Wittliff Collection holds three different examples of these galleys for in-house use.

RECIPIENT: Linton R. Massey in 1930 began to collect the work of an unknown Mississippi novelist named William Faulkner. Over the years Massey gave Faulkner support, both literary and financial, and when Faulkner moved to Charlottesville in the Fifties the two men became friends. Massey passed away in 1974. Massey’s collection now forms the heart of the great Faulkner archive at the University of Virginia’s Alderman Library. One of the reason because Erskine sent him the advance copy is that Massey was one of the founders of The William Faulkner Foundation which every year awarded a young writer. Actually, McCarthy won the prize for 1966. The main figure to help was John Langley though, professor of Humanities at the Virginia University, who was given by Erskine a copy of the proof and passed it on to the judges committee of the foundation. He went on writing a long, praising essay titled “Suttree and the Metaphisics of Death”. (Albert Erskine Papers).

PROVENANCE: the book comes from the collection of Bruce H. Kahn, a lawyer in Michigan specialized in mergers and acquisitions. He has been a collector since he was a teenager in the 1950s and 60s, starting with comic books and then building a comprehensive collection of science fiction first editions. In the mid-Eighties he sold his Science fiction collection and started collecting mainstream literature. In twenty years he amassed one of the most important American collection of modern firsts: 15,000 volumes, many of them signed or inscribed, almost all in amazing condition. The collection was sold starting in 2009 by well known book dealers Ken Lopez and Tom Congalton of Between the Covers. In the preface to the important catalog they issued, Congalton wrote: “I have been dealing with Bruce Kahn for at least two decades. He has always been a pleasant and genial fellow. He is an articulate and engaging conversationalist on many subjects, and most particularly literary subjects, and despite being a successful and very busy attorney, is always willing to make time to talk about them. […]. So what’s the problem with Bruce Kahn? That’s easy: Jeez, he was a pain in the ass to sell books to. He always wanted his books to be in perfect condition, and even the slightest flaw would be either unacceptable, or if he finally decided he could overlook some nearly microscopic flaw, it had damn well better be mitigated by being a unique copy or an exceptional rare book, or an important association copy, or preferably both”.
The letter is supplied from another copy coming from the collection of I.D. “Nash” Flores III and auctioned at Heritage Auctions on October, 2014.

NOTABLE COPIES:

• WOOLMER COPY. A good only copy, inscribed to Howard Woolmer on the first free endpaper in a later hand. Hold in the McCarthy Woolmer Collection, University of Texas, San Marcos.

• GONZALES COPY. A near fine copy inscribed to McCarthy’s friend and biographer Laurence Gonzales in a later hand. Hold in the Gonzales collection.

• FORD-WARNER COPY. An unsigned near fine copy with a laid in typed note requesting the book to be sent to “Mr C. McCarthy at 808 St. Philip Street, New Orleans, Louisiana” and signed “L.B.” was sold by Mark Warner on January, 2024 for $ 3,330. It comes from the collector Paul Ford and before him, from his father-in-law. It is an interesting copy because the address is that where McCarthy has been living between December, 1964 and March,1965 when these advance copies were sent out. In spite of that, the typed note is not on Random House letterhead so it is unclear either who wrote it and who “L.B.” was or wether the book would actually have been ever sent to McCarthy.

COLLECTING TOPICS: these advance reading copies are uncommon but much less than proofs of Child of God or Suttree. I have seen three of them listed on the web from December 2013 to May, 2014 in a price range between $ 3,000 and $ 4,000. On May, 2014 just one was left.

Rare Book Hub registers four copies at auction.

Copies with the original Erskine’s letter laid in seem to be genuinely scarce though. I am aware of only this and another one listed by Skyline Books before 2004 and mentioned by APG.

I know of only two copies signed or inscribed, those mentioned above. They are definitely rare.