Il tagliapietre (The Stonemason), first Italian edition. Einaudi, Torino, 2025. First Italian edition, first printing with complete number lines from 0 to 5 and to 2025 to 2029, and “Stampato […] nel mese di gennaio 2025” on a colophon page bound after the text at the rear of the book. Hardcover, 18.5 x 12.5 cm, 135 numbered pages.
The Road (La strada), graphic novel, adaptation by Manu Larcenet, first Italian edition. Coconino Press - Fandango, Roma, 2024. First Italian edition, first printing with “Finito di stampare nel mese di gennaio 2024” on the copyright page. Hardcover, without a dustjacket, as issued, 31.3 x 25.2 cm, 155 numbered pages in four-color printing.
The Road (La Route), “Black and White” first limited edition. Dargaud, Paris, 2024. First limited edition, only printing. Hardcover without a dustjacket as issued, 31 x 25 cm. Publisher’s gray thick cardboard covers, featuring two illustrations by Larcenet, differ from those of the first trade edition.
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.
Why is Bobby Western’s cat in The Passenger named Billy Ray? The first answer is another question: who cares? In spite of that, I asked myself while reading the book, mainly because of the care which McCarthy paid to choosing names in his novels and the fact that The Passenger features real friends of McCarthy, like John Sheddan, Bill Kidwell or Cynthia Farah, to name just a few. I guessed that the kidnapped cat was named after Billy Ray Reynolds, a talented musician who played guitar with the outlaw singer, the great Waylon Jennings and had a three-decade songwriting career...
Party celebrating All the Pretty Horses receiving the National Book Award, invitation card. N.p., November 1992. White card, lettered in black, 14 x 11 cm. Enclosed in two plain white card for preservation and in an Alfred A. Knopf envelop (which may not be the original one).
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.
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.
The McCarthy’s readers and fun community on Reddit, as far as I know the largest in existence, has overcome 30,000 registered people.