BIB_ID
451196
Accession number
MA 23866
Creator
Steinbeck, John, 1902-1968, author.
Display Date
California?, 1938 February-1938 March
Credit line
Purchased on the Drue Heinz Fund, 2023.
Description
1 item (9 pages) ; 26.9 x 21 cm
Notes
Inside cover features the inscription "New m.s.s. whatever they may be / John Steinbeck 1933 / I the story of the red pony".
A number of pages have been excised from the begining of the volume. The pages are numbered 95-98 (page 96 is left blank), 103-106, 107-135 are blank, 136 and 137 contain a list of radio stations, more pages have been excised before the final page, 145.
Steinbeck kept a writing journal while working on his most famous novel, The Grapes of Wrath, adding entries every morning before resuming work on the Joad family and their journey. The entries capture his anxiety about writing the book but also functioned as a form of daily encouragement. This journal survives in two forms: the original handwritten ledger book, given by Steinbeck to the Morgan in 1963, and a typescript at the Harry Ransom Center. The recently acquired handwritten journal fragment is unknown to scholars and records entries from February-March 1938. (The Grapes of Wrath journal at the Morgan begins in February 1938, but then jumps ahead to late May 1938 and continues through October 1938.) The literary and biographical seeds of Grapes of Wrath are present in the seven pages of entries; along with discussing the plight of migrant farmers in the Salinas Valley and the threat of the Associated Farmers, Steinbeck describes a literary project that would become the abandoned novel L'Affaire Lettuceburg--a satire about striking lettuce workers. By abandoning this book, Steinbeck prepared himself artistically for a new project on the migrant farmers of California, The Grapes of Wrath.--Bonhams
The Morgan holds the handwritten journal Steinbeck kept while writing The Grapes of Wrath in the summer and fall of 1938 (MA 4684), which was published as Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath, 1938-1941 (1989).
A number of pages have been excised from the begining of the volume. The pages are numbered 95-98 (page 96 is left blank), 103-106, 107-135 are blank, 136 and 137 contain a list of radio stations, more pages have been excised before the final page, 145.
Steinbeck kept a writing journal while working on his most famous novel, The Grapes of Wrath, adding entries every morning before resuming work on the Joad family and their journey. The entries capture his anxiety about writing the book but also functioned as a form of daily encouragement. This journal survives in two forms: the original handwritten ledger book, given by Steinbeck to the Morgan in 1963, and a typescript at the Harry Ransom Center. The recently acquired handwritten journal fragment is unknown to scholars and records entries from February-March 1938. (The Grapes of Wrath journal at the Morgan begins in February 1938, but then jumps ahead to late May 1938 and continues through October 1938.) The literary and biographical seeds of Grapes of Wrath are present in the seven pages of entries; along with discussing the plight of migrant farmers in the Salinas Valley and the threat of the Associated Farmers, Steinbeck describes a literary project that would become the abandoned novel L'Affaire Lettuceburg--a satire about striking lettuce workers. By abandoning this book, Steinbeck prepared himself artistically for a new project on the migrant farmers of California, The Grapes of Wrath.--Bonhams
The Morgan holds the handwritten journal Steinbeck kept while writing The Grapes of Wrath in the summer and fall of 1938 (MA 4684), which was published as Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath, 1938-1941 (1989).
Provenance
John Steinbeck; Mary Steinbeck Dekker; sold in New York, Bonhams, John Steinbeck: The Mary Steinbeck Dekker Family Collection, 25 October, 2023, lot 33.
Catalog link
Department