Beschreibung:

STEINBECK, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Viking Press, 1939. 8 o. Original pictorial beige cloth; pictorial dust jacket. Provenance : Marshall Best, senior editor at Viking Press (presentation inscription). AN IMPORTANT ASSOCIATION COPY OF ONE OF THE CENTURIES MOST POPULAR AND INFLUENTIAL NOVELS. FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY STEINBECK TO VIKING EDITOR MARSHALL BEST on the front free endpaper: "To Marshall Best gratefully John Steinbeck [with a doodle of a sailboat below his signature]." Remarkably, Steinbeck wrote this highly complex 200,000 word book in only six months. It was a huge bestseller with 430,000 copies selling in its first year of publication alone; and the book went through 19 printings between 1939 and 1963. Covici-Friede declared bankruptcy in the summer of 1938, and the firm and its authors were bought out by Viking. Grapes of Wrath was Steinbeck's second book published by Viking, but had begun the work under the editorship of Pascal Covici prior to his firm's bankruptcy. "Steinbeck's relationship with Viking was not what it had been with Covici-Friede. Although Covici has been assigned to remain as Steinbeck's editor, he was a new man in the firm and decisions were no longer his alone to make...Throughout Covici's tenure at Viking, Marshall Best stood in the background" (Jackson J. Benson The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer , New York, 1984, p. 390). Steinbeck and Best had heated disagreements over Best's editorial "suggestions" for The Grapes of Wrath , and the word "grateful" in the inscription may have been an attempt to placate his new editor. Over the decades the tensions between the two diminished and a genuine friendship grew. AN EXTREMELY FINE ASSOCIATION COPY. Goldstone and Payne A12a.