In A Narrow Grave: Essays On Texas [First "Skycrapers" Printing] Mcmurtry, Larry Fiction,Texas,Texas Author

McMurtry's first collection of essays, covering Texas history, Texas writers, cowboys, and as a coda to The Last Picture Show, sex in Archer City, Texas. At the time, McMurtry was best known as the writer whose first book Horseman, Pass By had been made into the movie, Hud. This first edition of In a Narrow Grave was very badly copyedited and dozens of errors made it through to the printed page, the most notorious typo was "skycrapers" on p. 105 (your humble cataloguer notes that the common scatalogical pronunciation of this neologism is sky-crappers, even though standard English would render it "sky-crepe-ers"). Other errors include "in in" on page 56, line 2 and the line beginning "Mr." in the second paragraph on page 134 repeated. The errors, inexplicably overlooked in the proofs, were glaringly obvious in the published book. The book was quickly withdrawn from distribution and a new, corrected version printed. The corrected version, the second printing, was accompanied by a signed, limited edition of 250 copies. Estimates of the number of surviving copies of the "skycrapers" first printing vary, with typical numbers given as 10-20. The book is not that rare. Realistically, the number of copies is probably two or three times that many. Even so, for a book distributed to the public (as opposed to a limited edition destined for collectors), 50 copies is vanishingly small print run in a state as large as Texas. Probably the scarcest of all McMurtry books. Your cataloguer has written a history of the publication of this book along with a detailed bibliography on Substack. 177 pages. First edition (first printing, with the "skycrapers" typo on p. 105). A fine copy in a fine dust jacket. This book wears incredibly easily. This is a fine, sharp copy, that looks like it just came out of the box.