"The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck -- First Edition Library

A near-perfect copy of the 1939 first edition of The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck – at a fraction of the cost of this hard-to-find collectible. In the late 1980s, The First Edition Library (FEL) began publishing high-quality facsimiles of unique first editions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries based on literary importance, historical significance, and author recognition. The degree of accuracy maintained in the duplication of original first editions was nothing less than extraordinary. FEL facsimiles have the same weight, size, typeface, art, dustjacket, finish, and texture as the originals. Even mistakes, known as first edition points, were duplicated as erroneously printed. The only alteration to the original was to include "FEL" on the rear dust jacket flap, and the book itself contained a block of text appearing on the copyright page identifying the printing as a facsimile reprint of the original. The First Edition Library did, however, make improvements to the originals. Acid-free paper was used, together with a slipcase attractively decorated with pastedowns of the dust jacket.

Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.