JOHN STEINBECK Nothing So Monstrous Rare 1936 Pynson Printers 1/370 Copies Adams
$1,096 · Offered by eBay
First edition · Limited edition
.no-subscribe { display: none} [contenteditable] { pointer-events: none; } NOTHING SO MONSTROUS: A Story by John Steinbeck Published by The Pynson Printers, New York, 1936. First edition thus. First separate printing. One of 370 copies. Very good half orange cloth over marbled boards, as issued without dustjacket. Tight binding, solid spine, clean unmarked text with light foxing throughout. 8vo, illustrated with pen and ink drawings by Donald McKay, 31 pages. This copy with printed colophon stating it was prepared at the request of Ruth and Frederick Adams for presentation to Hilda and Roderick Potter. December 1936, and in the circle of fine printing that orbited Elmer Adler's Pynson Printers, a small group of bibliophiles commissioned a Christmas keepsake to rival the best the private press movement could offer. They chose to extract from Steinbeck's second book, *The Pastures of Heaven*, the story of Junius Maltby—that lazy, book-drunk San Francisco clerk who finds perfect contentment sitting beside a California stream reading Robert Louis Stevenson while his farm falls to ruin and his neighbors whisper in disapproval. Steinbeck, then still three years from *The Grapes of Wrath*, added an epilogue found in no other edition, allowing father and son to escape society's demands for respectability. The tale remains among his most affecting early work: a quiet indictment of conformity and the American obsession with material prosperity, in which the happy poor are made miserabl
- Publisher: The Pynson Printers
- Year: 1936
- Binding: Hardcover
- Condition: Very Good
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