The Red Pony.

STEINBECK, John.

Item Number: 123581

New York: The Viking Press, 1945.

First illustrated edition of Steinbeck’s classic novella. Octavo, original cloth with pictorial onlay to the front panel, pictorial endpapers, with illustrations by Wesley Dennis. Near fine in the original slipcase which is in very good condition.

The three interconnected stories in this volume (a fourth was added in the 1945 edition) won praise on publication as "pure gold… all three of these stories have more depth, intensity and variety than one could possibly anticipate" (New York Times Book Review). To biographer Jackson Benson, they "act as a moral fulcrum… These stories, with their child observer, examine the nature of life and of death and the relationship of the individual to the whole" (True Adventures, 288).