B A U M A N R A R E B O O K S * * * * H O L I D A Y G I F T S * "SOME OF THE BEST WRITING STEINBECK HAS DONE": FIRST EDITION OF THE LONG VALLEY 44 44. STEINBECK, John. The Long Valley. New York, 1938. Octavo, original half beige cloth, dust jacket. $2600 First edition of Steinbeck’s “second and arguably best collection,” an anthology of 13 stories—ten appearing here in book form for the first time—along with the first publication of “Flight,” the first public issue of “St. Katy the Virgin” and the first collected printing of Steinbeck’s beloved novella, The Red Pony. “The value of The Long Valley… Steinbeck’s second and arguably best collection of short stories… cannot be overestimated” (Railsback & Meyer, 214-15). Upon publication, the 13 stories in The Long Valley earned Steinbeck high praise as “one of the most richly promising novelists” of his generation (New York Herald Tribune). The Long Valley contains “some of the best writing Steinbeck has done” (San Francisco Chronicle), with “subtleties of feeling that are the stock in trade of writers like Chekhov, D.H. Lawrence and Katherine Mansfield… The best thing in the book is the three-part story The Red Pony… a masterpiece” (New Yorker). Containing 13 stories, with the first publication of “Flight,” the first collected printing of The Red Pony (issued in a signed limited edition of 699 copies in 1937) and the first public issue of “St. Katy the Virgin” (printed in a privately issued signed limited edition of 199 copies in 1936). The additional ten stories were previously serialized in such magazines as Harpers Magazine, Atlantic Monthly and Esquire. Goldstone & Payne A11a. Morrow 90. Gross & Hayman, 28. Bruccoli & Clark I:354. Book with mild toning to endpapers, cloth spine and hinges; dust jacket with minor rubbing, toning to spine. A very nice copy.
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