The Moon Is Down.

STEINBECK, John.

$6,000.00

Item Number: 147549

New York: The Viking Press, 1942.

First edition of the Nobel Prize-winning author’s classic work. Octavo, original blue cloth. Lengthily signed by the author in a contemporary signature, “Affectionate Regards and memories of the Sierra Nevada, John Steinbeck.” Fine in a near fine price-clipped dust jacket. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. Signed first editions are rare.

In 1941 Steinbeck met “with officials of the Foreign Information Service, a newly formed unit of what would soon become the Office of Strategic Services, to discuss the future of American counterpropaganda efforts. The Moon Is Down, begun later the same month, had its origins in Steinbeck’s long-standing desire to contribute to these efforts… Steinbeck submitted a first finished draft of The Moon Is Down, originally written as a play (called ‘The New Order’) and set in a mid-sized town in the United States, to agency officials; they turned it down, concerned that the prospect of an occupied America might lower morale. Early in December Steinbeck began revising the work, shifting the setting to a generic northern Europe and recasting the play as a novel; he sent his revised draft to Pascal Covici, his editor at Viking, later in December. The Moon Is Down [as a novel] appeared in book form in March 1942. A stage version opened on Broadway on April 9, 1942, and was published by Dramatists Play Service in New York later in the same year” (Library of America). Second issue with the Haddon Craftsmen name on the copyright page and no period between "talk" and "this" on p. 112, line 11