Talk:The Pastures of Heaven

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Untitled[edit]

This is a great read. It reminds me of a modern 1001 Arabian nights. Steinbeck weaves a story with interconnecting characters, locales and of course sentiments. He also manages to portray community through romantic yet dark descriptions. May restlt in sentimental pangs for "simpler times gone by".

Publishing details[edit]

I hope this helps those who can edit the article:

Opening paragraph: https://www.steinbeck.org/his-work/the-pastures-of-heaven/

First issue, with original publisher's imprint at spine foot. "Brewer, Warren & Putnam printed 2500 sets of sheets, of which 1650 were bound and about 650 copies sold. The remainder were sold to Robert O. Ballou in 1932" (Goldstone & Payne, 22). Ballou produced the second and third issues in that year, with binding (in second and third issue) and title page (in third issue) differing from this first issue, notably by having the Ballou imprint on the bottom of the spine. Around 1935, Covici-Friede purchased the remaining portions of the first issue sheets and brought them out as the fourth issue. First issue dust jacket (height:195 mm); front flap with portrait of Steinbeck. Goldstone & Payne A2a. Bruccoli & Clark I:353. Valentine 14.

[1]

First published in the United States of America by Robert O. Ballou, Inc. 1932 Published by Viking Penguin, Inc. 1963 First published in Penguin Books 1982 Reissued in Penguin Books 1986 Copyright John Steinbeck, 1932 Copyright renewed John Steinbeck, 1960 [2]

New edition, completely reset, published by The Viking Press 1963 Published in a Viking Compass edition 1963 Published in Penguin Books 1982 This edition with an introduction by James Nagel published in Penguin Books 1995

The manuscript had been sent to Robert O. Ballou, an editor at Cape and Smith, and he accepted it for publication within three days. Steinbeck received the news on his thirtieth birthday, February 27, 1932, and it was the most encouraging development of his young career, but the euphoria was not to last. In March he learned that Jonathan Cape had gone bankrupt, and his book was not to be published after all. Then, in a fortuitous development, Robert Ballou, set adrift by the failure of the firm, landed a position at Brewer, Warren, and Putnam, and he brought The Pastures of Heaven with him. By May production on the bedeviled volume had resumed under the new imprint, and it appeared in October to very little fanfare, partly because the firm lacked the funds to market it aggressively. Indeed, shortly after publication of Steinbeck’s book, this publisher also declared bankruptcy, and Steinbeck made very little money on the project. The Depression, later to figure so importantly in his fiction, had hit him personally. In the final twist on the matter, two years later, Pascal Covici, head of the publishing firm of Covici-Friede in Chicago, read the stories enthusiastically and decided to buy up the contract and the existing backlog of books and issue the title again under his own imprint, which he did in the fall of 1935. The Pastures of Heaven was thus given a second life.

[James Nagel, Introduction, in John Steinbeck, THE PASTURES OF HEAVEN, Penguin 1995] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Agbneill (talk • contribs) 07:39, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]