Manuscript of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood to be published in collector’s edition – revealing never-before-seen sketches and working notes

Today, the extraordinary manuscript of Truman Capote’s true crime fiction novel, In Cold Blood, will be published in a beautifully bounded limited edition. 

Published by the independent publisher SP Books, this deluxe edition will bring together for the first time the author’s notebooks and papers preserved at the Library of Congress (Washington DC) and at the NYPL (New York), giving incredible insights into Truman Capote’s writing and investigation. 

● In Cold Blood: a unique assemblage of Truman Capote’s notebooks and papers preserved at the Library of Congress (Washington DC) and at the NYPL (New York) is to be published for the very first time.
● An extraordinary insight into Truman Capote’s writing and investigation.
● Deluxe edition, with a foreword by Ebs Burnough.

The beginning of a 5-year literary adventure

The journey that led to the publication of In Cold Blood started in November 1959. Leafing through the New York Times, Capote’s attention was caught by a paragraph on the horrific murder of a Kansas farmer and his family. The writer sensed an opportunity for an article… He had no idea that this enterprise, at once a personal, artistic and professional turning point, would last several years. Nor that right up to the point of resolution – with the execution of the murderers in April 1965 – he would accumulate 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. This material, of indisputable literary and historical importance, is mainly preserved in the Library of Congress in Washington DC, and in the New York Public Library.

Diving into Truman Capote’s writing and investigation

The present work offers a behind-the-scenes dip into the writing of the novel, following its four-part chronological structure. The reader will have the opportunity to peek at the notebooks outlining key scenes of the novel, which the publisher selected among the large volume of materials produced and collected by Capote.

The essence of the non-fiction novel

The reader will discover the very first paragraph of In Cold Blood, as well as Perry Smith’s confession during the arrest and the last scene in Holcomb’s cemetery with inspector Alvin Dewey. Truman Capote’s handwriting is neat, precise, and his draft is close but still different from the final version, 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.

The volume also includes a selection of working notes, all previously unpublished – a handwritten notebook where Capote makes some hypotheses about the crime mobile, plans of the Clutter property, notes on the trial accompanied by drawings… We can almost picture Truman Capote pacing the streets of Holcomb, notebook in hand, and then later, in the evening, in his hotel room reconstructing the essence of his conversations with the local people.

A foreword by Ebs Burnough

Ebs Burnough is a filmmaker, writer and producer. He is the author and director of The Capote Tapes (2021). He serves as Vice-Chair of the board of the Sundance Institute.

With grateful acknowledgements to Alan and Louise Schwartz (Truman Capote Literary Trust).

“No, I don’t use a typewriter. Not in the beginning. I write my first version in longhand (pencil). Then I do a complete revision, also in longhand. Essentially I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon. Obsessions of this sort, and the time I take over them, irritate me beyond endurance.” -Paris Review, 1957