John Steinbeck

A first edition, first printing copy of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

• John Steinbeck (American).
• New York: Viking Press, 1939.
• 619 pages.
• Octavo.
• Publisher's beige cloth, decoration to boards and and titles to spine in brown, pictorial endpapers and pictorial dust jacket, "FIRST EDITION" on the front flap and with the $2.75 price extant.

Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on the Joads, a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their home by drought, economic hardship and changes in financial and agricultural industries. Due to their nearly hopeless situation and in part because they were trapped in the Dust Bowl, the Joads set out for California. Along with thousands of other "Okies," they sought jobs, land, dignity and a future. Steinbeck was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1940 for this novel.