The Grapes of Wrath. by STEINBECK, John - 1939

New York: The Viking Press,, 1939. Presentation copy to his sister Octavo. Original buff cloth, titles to spine and pictorial design to covers in dark brown, endpapers decorated with the sheet music for Battle Hymn of the Republic, top edge yellow. With the dust jacket. Housed in a custom blue cloth chemise within blue half morocco box, spine lettered in gilt, blue cloth sides. A near-fine copy in the bright dust jacket, with a couple of tiny chips and trivial scuffing at extremities. First edition, first printing. A superb association copy, presented by the author to his sister Elizabeth Steinbeck, inscribed on the front free endpaper: "for Beth with love John". Elizabeth Steinbeck (1894-1992), John's elder sister, "understood the importance to her brother of family loyalty... Known as Beth, she enjoyed success in San Francisco while working as a purchaser and manager for a department store... In 1925, Beth helped her brother John by playing host to him when he arrived in New York empty handed. Her husband was able to get John a job with the James Stewart Construction Company working on the construction of Madison Square Garden (the predecessor to the current venue), where he hauled cement to bricklayers" (A John Steinbeck Encyclopedia, p. 6). Elizabeth later played an important part in the Valley Guild, the non-profit organisation that maintains the Steinbeck family home in Salinas, and donated many family artefacts to the museum. The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck's masterpiece, is widely regarded as the supreme literary achievement of the Depression era. The film adaptation of Darryl F. Zanuck, produced the following year, is also readily ranked among the greatest American films of the century. The present book passed by descent from Elizabeth Steinbeck [married name Ainsworth] to her daughter Elizabeth Ainsworth Wiltshile (1930-2005), was sold at her sale in Bonhams New York on the 18 February 2007 (lot 317), thereafter entered a private collection, and was entered into Sotheby's auctions in 2015 and 2018. Goldstone & Payne A12.