The Kickstarter campaign run last month by Back of Beyond Books, Moab, Utah, to fund three publishing projects to release work that both celebrates and interrogates Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey, raised $20,000, well beyond its goal of $15,000.
"We are over-the-top excited about your response," the store wrote in its September newsletter. Because of the "your generosity and spirit," Back of Beyond will publish:
- a facsimile of the first manuscript of Desert Solitaire, "crowded with hundreds of Ed's revisions in his hand," which will be printed in a limited edition of 50 presented in a clam-shell box;
- a suite of literary letterpress broadsides, in a limited edition of 100, featuring the words of Wendell Berry, Amy Irvine, Doug Peacock and Terry Tempest Williams, in honor of Desert Solitaire;
- Amy Irvine's essay "Desert Cabal--A New Season in the Wilderness," co-published by Torrey House Press and Back of Beyond Books, with a first printing of 3,500 copies. (The extra money raised in the Kickstarter campaign helped raise the print run from the original 1,000 copies.)
First published in 1968, Abbey's Desert Solitaire has been the bestselling book at Back of Beyond throughout its 29 years of existence. Abbey himself worked as a ranger at nearby Arches National Monument for two seasons in the 1950s, and the journal he kept during that time later grew into Desert Solitaire.