Politics & Government
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The Grapes of Wrath
The Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized-and sometimes outraged-millions of readers. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read
A Penguin Classic
First published in 1939, 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 of 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.
This Penguin Classics edition contains an introduction and notes by Steinbeck scholar Robert Demott.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
A Penguin Classic
First published in 1939, 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 of 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.
This Penguin Classics edition contains an introduction and notes by Steinbeck scholar Robert Demott.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Editorial Reviews
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
"Steinbeck is a poet. . . . Everything is real, everything perfect."
-Upton Sinclair, Common Sense"I think, and with earnest and honest consideration . . . that The Grapes of Wrath is the greatest American novel I have ever read."
-Dorothy Parker
"It seems to me as great a book as has yet come out of America."
-Alexander Woollcott
"I didn't understand at the time - no one could have - that [The Grapes of Wrath] was not just a historical document but also a document about our current world with its depiction of drought and its effects. . . . California, where the Joads went, is no longer the reliably verdant and green paradise they found; it's now coming out of a five-year drought of its own. . . . The other point that Steinbeck makes well, is that when we have huge, natural changes like these, the people who pay the largest price are the people most vulnerable and closest to the bottom. . . . None of them did anything much to cause the problem, and yet they are its early victims. . . . Steinbeck was trying to do something more than just simply tell a story. He's a remarkable writer, and this is his masterpiece."
- Bill McKibben, environmentalist
By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
"Steinbeck is a poet. . . . Everything is real, everything perfect."
-Upton Sinclair, Common Sense"I think, and with earnest and honest consideration . . . that The Grapes of Wrath is the greatest American novel I have ever read."
-Dorothy Parker
"It seems to me as great a book as has yet come out of America."
-Alexander Woollcott
"I didn't understand at the time - no one could have - that [The Grapes of Wrath] was not just a historical document but also a document about our current world with its depiction of drought and its effects. . . . California, where the Joads went, is no longer the reliably verdant and green paradise they found; it's now coming out of a five-year drought of its own. . . . The other point that Steinbeck makes well, is that when we have huge, natural changes like these, the people who pay the largest price are the people most vulnerable and closest to the bottom. . . . None of them did anything much to cause the problem, and yet they are its early victims. . . . Steinbeck was trying to do something more than just simply tell a story. He's a remarkable writer, and this is his masterpiece."
- Bill McKibben, environmentalist
Readers Top Reviews
Angus JenkinsonNick
The Audible version is a good partner. The Kindle version behaves. The novel is one of the great morally imaginative, passionately concerned, literary treats of the twentieth century. Evocative in symbolism, down to earth as a clod of earth, gripping as a child's trusting hand, it's road journey is also a heart journey, a painful, soaring testament to humanity's flaws and foibles, but also its creative love and courage through the microcosm of a family. Those interested in Sheld organising companies will appreciate the (inspired by real life) example of the US refugee camp. Those concerned for the refugee crisis of today will see this US migrant story as a paradigm for comparison. And for anyone it may be a resource to carry in your own life journey.
Mark Speed
An absolutely terrific read, and very much of its time. Some great painting of backgrounds, then populating with empathetic characters. Heavy on the symbolism. The only thing I didn't like was the pretentious essay in the foreword, which I eventually had to skip in order to just read the story. And, yes, there are inevitable parallels to be drawn with today's refugee problems. I think the lesson is a hard one - if your fellow countrymen can't treat their kith and kin kindly in these circumstances, then... well, I'll just leave it there.
Ad Mitchell
I was put off reading this "Classic" for many years having read Steinbeck's "King Arthur & the Knights" and "Travels with Charley" which I thought were very unimpressive. It turns out, of course, that The Grapes of Wrath is indeed a true classic. Makes you angry at how families and individuals were crushed under the wheels of capitalism's "progress" and just as relevant today as it was then. This book has ignited my interest in reading more of Steinbeck and I realise that my first two samples of his work were perhaps poor examples compared to the power of Grapes of Wrath.
NickLittle Bookness
I liked this book when I read it years ago, so I bought the Kindle version (cheap and fast). The Kindle version is terrible. It is extremely poorly formatted (stray words on the page) and terrible spelling (for lack of a better word, people's names were chopped up, letters replaced with punctuation, and some letters in the middle of words omitted). I returned the book within 20 minutes. I have a Kindle that is 10 years old. This review is from April 27, 2020.
GeraldDonna Smith Mc
I've always intended to read this American classic and finally got around to doing so. The writing style is beautiful and I now understand why it is considered a classic. If I was reviewing the hard cover, I'd give it five stars. However, the Kindle edition was rendered almost unreadable by the process of translation from hard copy to Kindle book. There was absolutely no editing done for the Kindle copy. Someone just turned on the word recognition software and didn't even check to see what the result was. The copy from which it was converted must have had the name of the book and the page number on each page because that appears sporadically in the middle of sentences and pages throughout the book. Many words were not recognized by the software so there are gaps and symbols within the words. Others are split into two nonsensical syllables. I could go on and on but it means having to guess at words multiple times on every page. What a distraction! If you want to read a copy of this book, get a used one from one of the dealers on Amazon. It is NOT worth purchasing the Kindle copy.
Short Excerpt Teaser
INTRODUCTION
I
The Grapes of Wrath is one of the most famous novels in America- perhaps even in the world. When John Steinbeck wrote this book he had no inkling that it would attain such widespread recognition, though he did have high hopes for its effectiveness. On June 18, 1938, a little more than three weeks after starting his unnamed new manuscript, Steinbeck confided in his daily journal (posthumously published in 1989 as Working Days):
If I could do this book properly it would be one of the really fine books and a truly American book. But I am assailed with my own ignorance and inability. I'll just have to work from a background of these. Honesty. If I can keep an honesty it is all I can expect of my poor brain. . . . If I can do that it will be all my lack of genius can produce. For no one else knows my lack of ability the way I do. I am pushing against it all the time.
Despite Steinbeck's doubts, which were grave and constant during its composition, The Grapes of Wrath turned out to be not only a fine book, but the most renowned and celebrated of his seventeen novels. Steinbeck's liberal mixture of native philosophy, common-sense leftist politics, blue-collar radicalism, working-class characters, homespun folk wisdom, and digressive narrative form-all set to a bold, rhythmic style and nervy, raw dialogue-qualified the novel as the "American book" he had set out to write. The novel's title-from Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic"-was clearly in the American grain-and Steinbeck, a loyal Rooseveltian New Deal Democrat, liked the song "because it is a march and this book is a kind of march-because it is in our own revolutionary tradition and because in reference to this book it has a large meaning," he announced on September 10, 1938, to Elizabeth Otis, his New York literary agent.
After its arduous composition from late May through late October 1938 ("Never worked so hard in my life nor so long before," Steinbeck told Carl Wilhelmson), The Grapes of Wrath passed from his wife's typescript to published novel (Viking's designers set the novel in Janson type-face) in a scant four months. In March 1939, when Steinbeck received copies from one of three advance printings, he told Pascal Covici, his editor at The Viking Press, that he was "immensely pleased with them." The novel's impressive physical and aesthetic appearance was the result of its imposing length (619 pages) and Elmer Hader's striking dust jacket illustration (which pictured the exiled Joads looking down from Tehachapi Pass to lush San Joaquin Valley). Steinbeck's insistence that The Grapes of Wrath be "keyed into the American scene from the beginning" by reproducing all the verses of "Battle Hymn," was only partly met: Viking Press compromised by printing the first page of Howe's sheet music on the book's endpapers in an attempt (unsuccessfully, it turned out) to deflect accusations of communism against the novel and its author.
Given the drastic plight of the migrant labor situation in California during the Depression, Steinbeck refused intentionally to write a popular book or to court commercial success. It was ironic, then, that shortly after its official publication date on April 14, 1939 (the fourth anniversary of "Black Sunday," the most devastating of all Dust Bowl storms), fueled by the nearly 150 reviews-mostly positive-that appeared in newspapers, magazines, and literary journals during the remainder of the year, The Grapes of Wrath climbed to the top of the bestseller lists for most of the year, selling 428,900 copies in hardcover at $2.75 each. (In 1941, when Sun Dial Press issued a cloth reprint for a dollar, the publisher announced that more than 543,000 copies of Grapes had already been sold.) The Grapes of Wrath won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize (Steinbeck gave the $1,000 prize to friend Ritch Lovejoy to encourage his writing career), eventually became a cornerstone of his 1962 Nobel Prize, and proved itself to be among the most enduring-and controversial-works of fiction by any American author, past or present. In spite of flaws, gaffes, and infelicities its critics have enumerated-or perhaps because of them (general readers tend to embrace the book's mythic soul and are less troubled by its imperfect body)-The Grapes of Wrath has resolutely entered both the American consciousness and its conscience. Few novels can make that claim.
If a literary classic can be defined as a book that speaks directly to readers' concerns in successive historical and cultural eras, no matter what their critical approaches, methods, or preoccupations are, then surely The Gr...
I
The Grapes of Wrath is one of the most famous novels in America- perhaps even in the world. When John Steinbeck wrote this book he had no inkling that it would attain such widespread recognition, though he did have high hopes for its effectiveness. On June 18, 1938, a little more than three weeks after starting his unnamed new manuscript, Steinbeck confided in his daily journal (posthumously published in 1989 as Working Days):
If I could do this book properly it would be one of the really fine books and a truly American book. But I am assailed with my own ignorance and inability. I'll just have to work from a background of these. Honesty. If I can keep an honesty it is all I can expect of my poor brain. . . . If I can do that it will be all my lack of genius can produce. For no one else knows my lack of ability the way I do. I am pushing against it all the time.
Despite Steinbeck's doubts, which were grave and constant during its composition, The Grapes of Wrath turned out to be not only a fine book, but the most renowned and celebrated of his seventeen novels. Steinbeck's liberal mixture of native philosophy, common-sense leftist politics, blue-collar radicalism, working-class characters, homespun folk wisdom, and digressive narrative form-all set to a bold, rhythmic style and nervy, raw dialogue-qualified the novel as the "American book" he had set out to write. The novel's title-from Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic"-was clearly in the American grain-and Steinbeck, a loyal Rooseveltian New Deal Democrat, liked the song "because it is a march and this book is a kind of march-because it is in our own revolutionary tradition and because in reference to this book it has a large meaning," he announced on September 10, 1938, to Elizabeth Otis, his New York literary agent.
After its arduous composition from late May through late October 1938 ("Never worked so hard in my life nor so long before," Steinbeck told Carl Wilhelmson), The Grapes of Wrath passed from his wife's typescript to published novel (Viking's designers set the novel in Janson type-face) in a scant four months. In March 1939, when Steinbeck received copies from one of three advance printings, he told Pascal Covici, his editor at The Viking Press, that he was "immensely pleased with them." The novel's impressive physical and aesthetic appearance was the result of its imposing length (619 pages) and Elmer Hader's striking dust jacket illustration (which pictured the exiled Joads looking down from Tehachapi Pass to lush San Joaquin Valley). Steinbeck's insistence that The Grapes of Wrath be "keyed into the American scene from the beginning" by reproducing all the verses of "Battle Hymn," was only partly met: Viking Press compromised by printing the first page of Howe's sheet music on the book's endpapers in an attempt (unsuccessfully, it turned out) to deflect accusations of communism against the novel and its author.
Given the drastic plight of the migrant labor situation in California during the Depression, Steinbeck refused intentionally to write a popular book or to court commercial success. It was ironic, then, that shortly after its official publication date on April 14, 1939 (the fourth anniversary of "Black Sunday," the most devastating of all Dust Bowl storms), fueled by the nearly 150 reviews-mostly positive-that appeared in newspapers, magazines, and literary journals during the remainder of the year, The Grapes of Wrath climbed to the top of the bestseller lists for most of the year, selling 428,900 copies in hardcover at $2.75 each. (In 1941, when Sun Dial Press issued a cloth reprint for a dollar, the publisher announced that more than 543,000 copies of Grapes had already been sold.) The Grapes of Wrath won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize (Steinbeck gave the $1,000 prize to friend Ritch Lovejoy to encourage his writing career), eventually became a cornerstone of his 1962 Nobel Prize, and proved itself to be among the most enduring-and controversial-works of fiction by any American author, past or present. In spite of flaws, gaffes, and infelicities its critics have enumerated-or perhaps because of them (general readers tend to embrace the book's mythic soul and are less troubled by its imperfect body)-The Grapes of Wrath has resolutely entered both the American consciousness and its conscience. Few novels can make that claim.
If a literary classic can be defined as a book that speaks directly to readers' concerns in successive historical and cultural eras, no matter what their critical approaches, methods, or preoccupations are, then surely The Gr...
