Today we continue our celebration of the 30th anniversary of The Alienist’s publication in 1994. This is the second in a series of posts to be released throughout 2024 honoring the novel’s enduring impact, and we do so with an even greater sense of purpose given the immensely sad news of the loss of its much treasured author last month. It was Caleb Carr’s vision that brought us the world of Dr. Kreizler and his team, and in this series we hope to pay tribute to his legacy. In this post, we turn to the novel’s publication, discussing its critical reception and early editions, before going on to examine some later special editions that are worth any serious collector’s attention.
A bestseller is born
Following a huge amount of buzz in the lead up to its publication (see Part One), The Alienist made its debut in March of 1994. Although its publisher, Random House, released the hardback first edition most readers would come to recognize, the novel’s true first edition was the Franklin Library Signed First Edition.
An affiliate of the Franklin Mint, the Franklin Library was operational from 1973 to 2000 and had several series of fine leather-bound (and some imitation and quarter-bound) books produced under their name. These included, among others, their 100 Greatest Books of All Time series, Signed First Edition series, and Signed Limited Edition series. Of note, the works they selected for their Signed First Edition series were those they believed had the potential to become the classics of the future—so the fact that they chose a debut novelist for a place on the list was highly unusual (for, although Caleb had one novel, Casing the Promised Land, to his name, it was little known and The Alienist was treated by most in the industry as a debut).
Nonetheless, the anticipation surrounding the novel (see Part One) resulted in the work receiving the honor of being included in the series, and Caleb also wrote a foreword that was exclusive to this edition. Like all other Franklin Library Signed First Editions, this edition was fully leather-bound with 22 karat gold ornamentation. It also included a custom illustration and was printed on acid-free paper with gilt edging. Although the precise number of copies was not made public by Franklin Library, the sequel which was also published by Franklin Library (see Part Four) was limited to 1,500 copies worldwide. As you can see below, it is a truly beautiful edition.
It is with great sadness that 17th Street acknowledges the passing of Caleb Carr, who died on Thursday, May 23, at the age of 68. According to The New York Times, he died at his home in Cherry Plain, NY. He had been fighting a difficult battle with cancer.
Although best known for his Alienist novels, Caleb’s career was long and varied. Beginning with America Invulnerable: The Quest for Absolute Security from 1812 to Star Wars in 1989 (co-written with friend and mentor, James Chace), Caleb wrote extensively about military history and national security. His most prominent non-fiction works included a biography of Frederick Townsend Ward, The Devil Soldier: The American Soldier of Fortune Who Became a God in China, and an examination of the history of terrorism, The Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare Against Civilians. In addition, Caleb was the editor of Random House’s Modern Library War Series and was a contributing editor to MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. In the mid-2000s, he also spent a number of years teaching military history studies at Bard College as a Visiting Professor.
Outside of academia, Caleb spent a number of years working in the film industry and theatre whilst freelancing in the 1980s. His work in the film industry continued into the 1990s, and he was involved with several TV mini series and films as a presenter, executive producer, and writer. Most notably, he wrote the TV movies Bad Attitudes in 1991 and The Warlord: Battle for the Galaxy in 1998, and was credited as a co-writer for Exorcist: The Beginning and Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist in 2004 and 2005, respectively. Testifying to his versatility, Caleb started working as a librettist with friend and composer Ezequiel Viñao in the 1990s on Merlin, an opera based on the Arthurian legends, and he even tried his hand at politics: he ran as a Democrat for the Rensselaer County Legislature in 2005, but was unsuccessful.
Despite these varying areas of interest, it was through fiction that Caleb’s talents shone brightest. Although he described his first novel Casing the Promised Land as “roman à clef nonsense,” his subsequent works were enormously successful. In 1994, The Alienist spent six months on The New York Times bestseller list, won the 1995 Anthony Award for Best First Novel, and was nominated for the 1995 Bram Stoker Best Novel Award. Its sequel, The Angel of Darkness, was similarly well-received when it was published in 1997 and outsold its predecessor. In 2000, Caleb made an unanticipated venture into sci-fi with a serial for Time magazine, Killing Time, which was later published in book form, before returning to his roots in historical fiction with The Italian Secretary: A Further Adventure of Sherlock Holmes, which the Doyle estate commissioned in 2005. After taking a break for several years, Caleb then returned to fiction in 2012 with his Dark Age saga, The Legend of Broken, and surprised fans four years later with Surrender, New York, a contemporary thriller set in upstate New York with strong ties to the Alienist novels.
In addition to Surrender, the mid-2010s heralded a second exciting announcement for Caleb’s loyal readership: Mulholland Books would be publishing the long-anticipated continuation of the Alienist series. The continuation was set to comprise two novels, but due to delays and significant illness, the plans were unfortunately not able to come to fruition. Instead, Caleb’s last book, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me, was released in April of 2024. A deeply personal work, the memoir is a love story documenting his life and shared bond with his feline companion, Masha.
As the owner of 17th Street, I did not want to leave this moment unmarked on a personal level. Although Caleb was a deeply private person, he was always supportive of 17th Street and I sincerely valued his generosity and kindness. While I am sure that his many loyal readers will indeed be sorry that he was unable to complete the Alienist series as planned, I know that in the last years of his life, he didn’t feel that he had more than one book left–and he wanted that book to be for Masha. I am only grateful that he lived to see the outpouring of support and praise My Beloved Monster received on its publication last month. I will miss his friendship deeply.
17th Street will remain active and I will be spending the second half of 2024 remembering Caleb’s works, including The Alienist which was published thirty years ago in 1994. I hope you will join me in continuing to show your support for an author who endured much, but whose works have made an enormous difference for the better in so many people’s lives.
For those who are finding the website through this post, please note that Caleb Carr passed away in May, 2024. See Remembering Caleb Carr (1955-2024) for 17th Street’s memorial to a beloved author.
“You can practically hear the clip-clop of horses’ hooves echoing down old Broadway … You can taste the good food at Delmonico’s. You can smell the fear in the air.”
So began The New York Times’s review of The Alienist in 1994, and the words are no less true now than they were then. Published thirty years ago this month on March 15, 1994, Caleb Carr’s breakthrough thriller went on to garner significant public and critical acclaim, spending 24 weeks on the Times’s hardcover fiction bestseller list and earning its author an Anthony Award in 1995. It’s little wonder why. Through its seamless blend of meticulously researched historical detail, captivating team of investigators led by the enigmatic and brilliant Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, and thrilling chase for a killer, the novel captured the imaginations of so many readers that it has been studied in schools and is considered a modern classic of its genre.
For the 20th anniversary of the The Alienist’s publication in 2014, 17th Street featured an in-depth collection of posts exploring the novel’s themes and enduring appeal. This year, we will be commemorating Caleb and celebrating the work’s 30th anniversary by delving into the novel’s journey to publication with some wonderful insights into rare early editions, along with discussing the reception the novel received upon release and the legacy it has left on the genre today. Like the 20th anniversary series, this celebration will take place over a series of posts, and I hope it will provide something of interest to new and old fans alike.
To the beginning, then!
The journey to publication
In the afterword to the 2006 trade paperback edition of The Alienist, Caleb Carr wrote: “Like most wonderful and terrible things, The Alienist was never supposed to happen.”
Two years before the groundbreaking thriller was set to make its appearance and change the landscape of historical fiction, Caleb’s first major sole-authored work of military history, The Devil Soldier, had just been published by Random House, and its author was on the hunt for his next subject. But instead of a work of history, another idea had been brewing. “A lifelong interest in crime and the formation of the mind had led me to decide on a psychological thriller,” Caleb explained in the 2006 afterword, “but my grounding in nonfiction would not allow me to be anything but rigorous in my research and approach. This, I soon realized, could get tricky: How do you devise a story that includes the kind of hard science I’d nosed around in without making readers and audiences want to drive ice picks through their own eyes?”
The challenge went beyond the difficulties of incorporating complex philosophical ideas and early forensic science in a thriller, though. Given that Caleb was still in the process of building a profile as a serious historian, his agent, Suzanne Gluck at WME, and editor, Ann Godoff at Random House, were not of a mind to encourage Caleb’s move from nonfiction to fiction. Thus, once he settled on a subject — inspired, at least in part, by his experiences as a college student during the ‘Son of Sam’ killings in New York — Caleb needed a way to convince his publishing partners to support the switch. The solution, he decided, lay in selling the story as a work of nonfiction, not fiction. To pull off such a scheme required not only a believable premise, but also doctored paperwork, including a false visual: a photograph showing Dr. Laszlo Kreizler visiting Theodore Roosevelt in the White House, years after the events of The Alienist supposedly took place.
The process of creating the false image, and the a copy of the photograph itself, can be found in the 2006 afterword (which I highly recommend reading), but for our purposes here, what matters is the end result: it worked. Caleb’s agent, Suzanne Gluck, took the ruse well, and his editor, Ann Godoff — even then, a formidable force in publishing — was also won over. And so, after receiving an advance of $65,000 for the book, the process of writing began. In an interview with New York Magazine in 1994, it was explained:
For fourteen months, Carr lived The Alienist. He read dozens of books on serial killers and huddled with Dr. David Abrahamsen, a dean of forensic psychiatry. Friends would bump into Carr at odd hours, in odd parts of town, trying to track down addresses that had long disappeared. One ex-girlfriend recalls that during touch-football games, he’d talk brain dissection.
The specifics of the novel’s editorial process have not been discussed in interviews (at least to my knowledge), but the novel’s timeline from Spring, 1993 onward is known. At that time, Caleb turned in the 700-page manuscript, and soon afterward it began to circulate around Hollywood. By late June, the debut thriller had built such buzz that producer Scott Rudin had purchased the film rights for $500,000. This only caused interest in the still-unpublished novel to skyrocket.
By September of 1993, photocopied typescripts of the novel were ready to be distributed to sales representatives. A kind visitor to 17th Street, Steve Rogers, sent through photographs of an extremely rare copy of one of these typescripts that he was recently able to acquire. Bound in plain blue stock paper and tape with a note from Bridget Marmion, the Random House Director of Marketing, on the cover, this fascinating typescript includes an editorial fact sheet (revealing a first printing of 100,000 copies), a copy of The Hollywood Reporter‘s article on Scott Rudin’s purchase of the film rights, and the manuscript itself.
To a collector, this is like finding gold. Other than Caleb Carr’s original manuscript, editorial copies, and whatever copies were distributed to sell the movie rights, this is likely the earliest copy that exists. But Steve had several other rare editions that he was kind enough to share photographs of for the website.
For those who are finding the website through this post, please note that Caleb Carr passed away in May, 2024. See Remembering Caleb Carr (1955-2024) for 17th Street’s memorial to a beloved author.
There is no denying that it has been quite some time since my last update. Unfortunately, 17th Street simply became a casualty of trying to fit too much into too little time. Rest assured that I never had any plans to permanently walk away from something that has given me so much over the years, so I am back to share an important update with those of you who, like me, continue to appreciate these wonderful books.
Let’s begin with the news that I’m sure you are all most interested in. Loyal readers would be aware that several years ago Mulholland Books announced that they would be publishing the long-awaited third Alienist novel in late 2019. When this did not come to pass, it prompted a number of readers to wonder what had happened. I have now had it confirmed that the book suffered a significant delay due to a necessary change in its concept and plot from what had originally been announced. Fortunately, the resulting change has been well-received by everyone involved, and I’m sure we are all looking forward to learning more about the new book’s premise once it is announced.
Even though this is good news for the series, I am sorry to report that this third instalment is also facing an additional challenge. Unfortunately, it has been confirmed that Caleb Carr is currently waging a formidable health battle that is slowing his progress on the book. Despite this, I can confirm that Caleb still has every intention of moving forward with the novel in the future and is looking forward to doing so. First and foremost, however, he needs to continue to focus his energy on his ongoing treatment. I hope you will join me in wishing Caleb the very best as he fights this important battle.
Finally, regular visitors to the website will be aware that this update also brings change to the air. After many years with the old site layout, I decided it was time to finally be refreshed. So, in honour of Caleb’s birthday today, I am pleased to share 17th Street’s new look with you all. I hope that you like the layout and find it easy to navigate. You may also notice some small updates to the formatting throughout the site over the coming weeks.
