This early version of John Steinbeck’s most famous novel, written in less than 100 days, will be released by SP Books on 7 October
The handwritten manuscript of John Steinbeck’s masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath, complete with the swearwords excised from the published novel and revealing the urgency with which the author wrote, is to be published for the first time.
Written in under 100 days between May and October 1938, The Grapes of Wrath was Steinbeck’s effort to chronicle the migrant crossings that he had reported on as a journalist for the San Francisco News. The author, who at 36 had already published Of Mice and Men, felt a huge pressure, and responsibility, to get his story right, writing in his diary at the time: “This must be a good book. It simply must. I haven’t any choice. It must be far and away the best thing I’ve ever attempted – slow but sure, piling detail on detail until a picture and an experience emerge.”