Tortilla Flat
John Steinbeck, 1935
STEINBECK, John (1902-1968). Tortilla Flat. New York: Covici Friede, 1935.

First edition, hardcover issue, of Steinbeck’s first commercial success. Approximately 500 copies were also bound in wrappers, but no evidence has been found that the wrappers precede the hardcover issue. Set in the tumbledown section of the town of Monterrey, California, a contemporary review in the New York Times praised it as a “humorous and whimsical tale […] of sun-loving, heavy wine-drinking, anti-social loafers.” Goldstone & Payne A4b.

Octavo. Original cloth; pictorial dust jacket (fading to spine panel, minor chipping and wear at head of spine panel and bottom of front panel with reinforcement to verso); custom box.