Tag: Nobel Prize

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It’s Raining John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck is known as one of the greatest American writers of all time. A Pulitizer Prize and Nobel Prize winner, he’s best remembered for the Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men. However, his Nobel Prize came with some controversy and years later when the Nobel archives were opened up, it was revealed that the selection for that year was not particularly outstanding, and that a compromise had been made. Steinbeck was reputedly very modest about his own writing and admired many others.

Wiki tells us that: ‘At his own first Nobel Prize press conference he was asked his favorite authors and works and replied: “Hemingway‘s short stories and nearly everything Faulkner wrote.”‘

Why don’t you decide for yourself! I was drawn to his short stories in The Red Pony, which remains one of my favourite collections.

In store now we have the following to choose from:

The Pearl – Reprint, 1951

The Winter of Our Discontent – First UK edition, 1961

The Wayward Bus – First US edition, 1947

Cannery Row – First UK edition, 1945

The Grapes of Wrath – Reprint, 1944

The Short Reign of Pippin IV – First UK edition, 1957

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Patrick White First Editions

Currently in store, we have three nice first editions books by esteemed Australian author and Nobel Prize winner (1973), Patrick White.

Starting with The Vivisector, “a novel about a painter, Hurtle Duffield, who exploits human relationships for his art. After the novel was published in 1970, Sidney Nolan believed Duffield was based on him, but White denied this, stating that Duffield was a composite of his own character and the working life of the artists John Passmore and Godfrey Miller.” (Wiki)

Next is The Burnt Ones, a collection of short stories set in Australia and Greece. The Burnt Ones are “haunted by feelings of isolation, intense self-examination, and an acute awareness of how they are different from others.” (Wiki). Stories include:

  • Dead Roses
  • Willy-Wagtails by Moonlight
  • A Glass of Tea
  • Clay
  • The Evening at Sissy Kamara’s
  • A Cheery Soul
  • Being Kind to Titina
  • Miss Slattery and Her Demon Lover
  • The Letters
  • The Woman Who Wasn’t Allowed to Keep Cats
  • Down at the Dump

Lastly, we have a second story collection called The Cockatoos, which dives below the surface to deeper subjects. “Critics have seen in this collection a darkness, a loneliness, less playfulness than his previous pieces. Certainly there is repeated imagery of marriages and relationships driven dry by time or a lack of passion.” This is the first UK edition from 1974.

  • A Woman’s Hand
  • The Full Belly
  • The Night the Prowler
  • Five Twenty
  • Sicilian Vespers
  • The Cockatoos

All three copies are in good condition and highly collectible.