A series of successful novels dealing with the downtrodden in his native California (Tortilla Flat, 1935; In Dubious Battle, 1936; Of Mice and Men, 1937; and The Long Valley, 1938) preceded John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath (1939), which made the Joad Family, displaced Oklahoma farmers in California, a household word and was hailed even on publication as the greatest modern American novel. Its frank language and honest depiction of sordid conditions brought Steinbeck censorship and much verbal abuse; but the novel won the Pulitzer Prize for 1940 and more than anything subsequently written gained for Steinbeck the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.

Our copy is a first edition signed by the author, "For Brooks and Cy--in grateful memory of a hell of a lot of horse shit."

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