Landmark Books in All Fields
ItemID: #115123
Cost: $29,500.00

The Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck

"FOR ALAN LERNER, JOHN STEINBECK": SIGNED AND INSCRIBED ASSOCIATION FIRST EDITION OF STEINBECK’S GRAPES OF WRATH, LYRICIST ALAN LERNER’S COPY

STEINBECK, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Viking, 1939. Octavo, original pictorial beige cloth, illustrated endpapers, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $29,500.

First edition of Steinbeck's most important novel, his searing masterpiece of moral outrage and "intense humanity," winner of the 1940 Pulitzer Prize, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper: "For Alan Lerner / John Steinbeck."

"It is a long novel, the longest that Steinbeck has written, and yet it reads as if it had been composed in a flash, ripped off the typewriter and delivered to the public as an ultimatum… Steinbeck has written a novel from the depths of his heart with a sincerity seldom equaled" (Peter Monro Jack). "The Grapes of Wrath is the kind of art that's poured out of a crucible in which are mingled pity and indignation… Its power and importance do not lie in its political insight but in its intense humanity… [It] is the American novel of the season, probably the year, possibly the decade" (Clifton Fadiman).

Lerner was a major figure in Broadway circles during the greatest age of the American musical, having written lyrics for My Fair Lady and Camelot. First issue, with "First Published in April 1939" on copyright page and first edition notice on front flap of dust jacket.

A fine presentation copy of this American classic in exceptionally bright original dust jacket with three tiny closed tears along bottom edge. A beautiful and desirable copy.

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