Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research

Steinbeck, John; Ricketts, Edward F.

ISBN 10: 0911858083 / ISBN 13: 9780911858082

Published by Viking Press, 1941

About this Item

8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" In blue and red jacket over green cloth with silver titling, 8vo, 598pp. Illustrated with color and b/w illustrations. A wonderful copy inscribed to long-lived Irish rabble-rowser Sheila O'Leary on the half title page by Steinbeck: "For Sheila O'leary - O'leary - O'leary - For Sheila O'leary. - John Steinbeck". (slight edgewear to outer jacket at tips and corners, slight toning to edges and endpapers).

Seller Inventory # 0818126

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research
• Publisher: Viking Press
• Publication Date: 1941
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0911858083
• ISBN 13: 9780911858082
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Signed: Inscribed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

The novelist and biologist record their experiences and scientific findings during an expedition into the Gulf of California

About the Author

John Steinbeck, born in Salinas, California, in 1902, grew up in a fertile agricultural valley, about 25 miles from the Pacific Coast. Both the valley and the coast would serve as settings for some of his best fiction. In 1919 he went to Stanford University, where he intermittently enrolled in literature and writing courses until he left in 1925 without taking a degree. During the next five years he supported himself as a laborer and journalist in New York City, all the time working on his first novel, Cup of Gold (1929). After marriage and a move to Pacific Grove, he published two California books, The Pastures of Heaven (1932) and To a God Unknown (1933), and worked on short stories later collected in The Long Valley (1938). Popular success and financial security came only with Tortilla Flat (1935), stories about Monterey's paisanos. A ceaseless experimenter throughout his career, Steinbeck changed courses regularly. Three powerful novels of the late 1930s focused on the California laboring class: In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), and the book considered by many his finest, The Grapes of Wrath (1939). The Grapes of Wrath won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1939.Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962, and, in 1964, he was presented with the United States Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Steinbeck died in New York in 1968. Today, more than 30 years after his death, he remains one of America's greatest writers and cultural figures.

Edward F. Ricketts was a marine biologist, ecologist, and philosopher. His most well-known work is Between Pacific Tides, which is a study of intertidal ecology. He was a major influence on the beloved American writer John Steinbeck, which led to their productive collaboration on the non-fiction work Sea of Cortez. Ricketts died in 1948.