The Border Trilogy

By Cormac McCarthy

First US editions, first impressions, three volumes: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992, 1994 and 1998.

Octavo. Quarter black cloth over paper-covered boards, the spines lettered in gilt. Dust jackets designed by Chip Kidd, unclipped and priced $21.00, $23.00 and $24.00 respectively; jacket photographs by David Katzenstein, Melanie Acevedo, and Larry Schwarm after his Wheat Stubble Fire, Eastern Colorado, 1992.

All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing near fine or better: the bindings square and firm, the cloth unmarked and the spine lettering bright, the text blocks clean and free of inscriptions. A touch of rubbing to the bottom edge of the boards of The Crossing with a handling mark to fore-edge of upper board. Cities of the Plain a fine copy, square and unrubbed, the contents clean throughout.

The jackets of the first two volumes near fine or better, unfaded and with the black panels unrubbed; a few faint spots to the verso of the jacket of All the Pretty Horses. The jacket of Cities of the Plain very good or better, with some moderate staining to the bottom edge of the lower panel.

All the Pretty Horses won both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992, and was filmed in 2000 by Billy Bob Thornton with Matt Damon as John Grady Cole and Penélope Cruz as Alejandra. It was the book that moved McCarthy from a writer's writer with a small following to the front of American fiction, and the trilogy it opened carries John Grady Cole and Billy Parham from the Texas border country into Mexico and back, the two brought together in the last volume. The jacket of The Crossing quotes the National Book Award citation for its predecessor; the jacket of Cities of the Plain the reviews of both. McCarthy died on 13 June 2023.