Independent publisher SP Books today publishes a deluxe edition of Truman Capote’s true crime fiction novel In Cold Blood. It brings together for the first time the author’s notebooks and papers preserved at the Library of Congress and at the NYPL in a limited edition of 1,000 copies.
Through never before seen working notes and sketches, the reader will be able to retrace Capote’s five-year-long investigation. Highlights include hypotheses on the crime motive from the author's handwritten notebook, plans of the Clutter property, and notes on the trial and crime scene, all accompanied by drawings. Capote accumulated a huge mass of handwritten notebooks, sheets of handwritten and typed-up notes, official documents, letter exchanges with a range of correspondents, sketches, and drawings.
Capote’s handwriting is neat, precise, and his draft is close but still different from the final version of In Cold Blood, with some stylistic changes, and rewritten passages. He usually wrote on the right-hand pages of his notebooks: once the last page was reached, he would flip the notebook to continue the story – hence the upside-down pages - offering a unique reading experience.
The manuscript also features a foreword written by Ebs Burnough, author and director of The Capote Tapes (2021).
