"THE FOUNDATION FOR LATER ARTISTIC GREATNESS": RARE FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE, OF STEINBECK'S TO A GOD UNKNOWN, ONE OF ONLY 598 COPIES BOUND AND SOLD, IN ORIGINAL DUST JACKET

STEINBECK, John. To a God Unknown. New York: Robert O. Ballou, (1933). Octavo, original green cloth, pictorial endpapers, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $10,500.

First edition, exceptionally rare first issue of Steinbeck's first California novel, one of only 598 first issue copies bound and sold, his third published novel—"Steinbeck invested his essential self in it"—a handsome copy in the rarely found original dust jacket.

Steinbeck called To a God Unknown, his first California novel, a work that "leaves realism farther and farther behind." Drawing on an unfinished play, The Green Lady, by his friend Webster 'Toby' Street, Steinbeck here explored ways to redefine "reality to include the seen and unseen, physical and metaphysical, quotidian and psychological elements… Steinbeck's goal, writes his biographer, Jackson Benson, was to make people 'see the whole as it really is… Steinbeck invested his essential self in it." The novel seems especially propelled by a comment he made to George Albee in 1932: "You haven't any place you know until you make one. And if you make one, it will be a new one." When Steinbeck received a small shipment of the novels from his publisher on September 12, 1933, with its dust jacket, endpapers and title page vignette designed by Steinbeck's friend Mahlon Blain, he wrote Ballou: "'The books came this morning and I like them immensely. Thank you for doing such a fine job… Steinbeck labored longer on To a God Unknown than on any other book, including his two famous epics, The Grapes of Wrath [1939] and East of Eden [1952]… Because he may have learned more about crafting long fiction from it than from anything else he worked on during that period, this book laid the foundation for later artistic greatness" (DeMott, Introduction, To a God Unknown). First edition, first issue, in green cloth, with Robert O. Ballou imprint on title page, top edge stained black; dust jacket with "$2.00 price" on front flap. Goldstone & Payne A3. Bruccoli & Clark, 353. Salinas Public Library Collection, 20.

Interior fine, cloth with mild toning, faint ghosting from dust jacket (as often); dust jacket with mild wear to corners and spine ends, light toning to spine and rear panel. An extremely good copy.