McCARTHY, Cormac (1933-2023). Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West. New York: Random House, 1985.

8vo. Original cloth-backed boards, gilt-lettered spine; in unrestored unclipped dust jacket (few minor scuffs on rear panel).

FIRST EDITION of the author's magnum opus that is considered the "Great American Novel" that "asks us to endure a vision of the Old West full of charred human skulls, blood-soaked scalps, a tree hung with the bodies of dead infants. But while Cormac McCarthy's fifth novel is hard to get through, it is harder to ignore. Any page of his work reveals his originality, a passionate voice given equally to ugliness and lyricism" (James, The New York Times, 28 April 1985).