The Grapes of Wrath - FIRST EDITION, FIRST PriNTING

John Steinbeck

Published by Viking, 1939

About this Item

One of the greatest works of literature of the last century. This is a FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING in very good condition. It comes with a first state original dust jacket that is from a later printing, but it is first state with the $2.75 price. This dust jacket is in good shape with minor chipping and is protected by a mylar cover. So you have the true first printed book from 1939 and the first state dust jacket even though it does not reflect first printing on the jacket it adds to the appearance of your book on the shelf or as displayed. Did you know that John Steinbeck once did something few writers would ever dare. He hid in a migrant camp under a fake name just to see if America would treat him like one of its own. It didn t. It was 1936, the heart of the Great Depression. Steinbeck kept hearing stories families from Oklahoma and Texas, farmers who had lost everything to dust and drought, flooding into California in broken trucks. They came chasing a dream, but what they found was hunger, hate, and fields owned by men who saw them as less than human. Newspapers called them Okies. Politicians called them a problem. Steinbeck couldn t just write about it from a distance. If you want to understand a man s pain, he once said, you have to walk with him in the mud. So he borrowed an old car, put on torn clothes, and vanished into the San Joaquin Valley. For weeks, he lived among the migrant workers sleeping under the stars, eating scraps, and sharing stories by dying campfires. He watched mothers try to hush their crying babies with songs instead of food. He saw children digging through trash for rotten fruit. You have no idea how terrifying hunger sounds when it cries, he later wrote. It changes the shape of a man s face. Every night, after the others slept, Steinbeck sat by a lantern and scribbled pieces of dialogue, sketches of faces, small moments of grace in a world built on suffering. Out of those notes came The Grapes of Wrath. When it was published in 1939, it shook America to its core. Growers burned the book in public. Politicians called him a liar. Churches banned it from shelves. But the people who had lived those lives the ones with blistered hands and dust in their lungs they wept. He told the truth, one farmer said. At last, someone saw us. Steinbeck won a Pulitzer then a Nobel Prize for this incredible work.

Seller Inventory # ABE-1761180711250

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Grapes of Wrath - FIRST EDITION, FIRST PriNTING
• Publisher: Viking
• Publication Date: 1939
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good
• Weight: 3 pounds