Truman Capote

First printing of the pivotal true-crime book.

• Truman Capote (American).
• New York: Random House, 1965.
• [10], 343, [1] pages.
• Signed by Capote in black ink on half title.
• Ink ownership signature "Dorothy B. Hughes" in blue ink on front flyleaf.
• In original unclipped ($5.95) typographic dust jacket designed by S. Neil Fujita.
• Bound in original dark red cloth, gilt-lettered front board, silver- and gilt-lettered spine, dark red endpapers, black topstain, fore-edge machine deckle.

Capote wrote In Cold Blood in search of a form that married non-fiction with elements of literary fiction. He researched it in Kansas with childhood friend Harper Lee, whose way with people opened doors in the tense atmosphere. ("She is a gifted woman, courageous, and with a warmth that instantly kindles most people, however suspicious or dour," Capote told Plimpton in 1966.) Writing In Cold Blood, Capote attempted to understand the minds of killers — a trait that Sarah Weinman ascribes to Hughes in the novel In a Lonely Place nearly twenty years before: "She was describing the psyche and actions of a serial killer years before the term existed." A jaw-droppingly great association copy, linking the two writers in the 20th century who most transformed how we write about murder.

Plimpton, "The Story Behind a Nonfiction Novel," in the New York Times, 16 January 1966.

Weinman, "On the World's Finest Female Noir Writer, Dorothy B. Hughes," in the Los Angeles Review of Books, 12 August 2012.