A rare edition of John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath has sold for $47,800 (£24,380), doubling the estimated price and setting what is believed to be a world record for a book by the Nobel Prize-winning author.
The sale was part of an auction of first editions previously owned by Steinbeck’s sister, Elizabeth Steinbeck Ainsworth, who died in 1992. Most of the books carried personal inscriptions, raising their value as sought-after “association copies” and providing valuable nuggets of information for Steinbeck scholars. A copy of Tortilla Flat, a tale of the paisano polulation of Monterey, California, bore the inscription “For my dear sister Elizabeth, without whom I should never have known the people about whom this book is written.”
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Steinbeck sale sets new world record
Guardian Unlimited, Monday February 19, 2007