Tortilla Flat.

STEINBECK, John.

Item Number: 138117

New York: Covici-Friede Publishers, 1935.

First edition of Steinbeck’s first commercially successful book. Octavo, original cloth, illustrated. Boldly signed by John Steinbeck on the front free endpaper. Near fine in a near fine price-clipped dust jacket, erasure to the front free endpaper. Illustrated by Ruth Gannett. Housed in a custom clamshell box. One of the most difficult books in the Steinbeck canon to locate signed.

Set in Monterey, California, Tortilla Flat tells the story of a small band of paisanos who resist the the corrupting tides of honest toil in favor of a life of adventure. It is the story of Danny, who, home from the war, inherits two houses which at once become a haven for his friends and lovers, not unlike the chivalric order of King Arthur and his court, the Knights of the Round Table. It deals with the band's adventuring, multiple loves and wonderful brawls, and Gargantuan wine-drinking. "An utterly unprecedented sort of book, and hard to analyze in its unique charm" (Virginia Kirkus).