Nothing So Monstrous

STEINBECK, John.

Nothing So Monstrous.

FIRST SEPARATE EDITION, limited to 370 copies. New York: Pynson Printers, December 1936.

Octavo. 30, [1] pp. Original orange buckram spine over marbled paper boards, lettered in black; issued without dust jacket. Pen-and-ink drawings throughout by Donald McKay. Light wear to extremities, else a fine copy. Goldstone & Payne A2f; see Morrow 16.

One of the 50 copies subscribed by Edwin J. Beinecke. The printed colophon at the rear reads: "This copy of Nothing So Monstrous with pen and ink drawings by Donald McKay was made by the Pynson Printers of New York at the request of Edwin J. Beinecke for presentation to Dr. J. A. Giles December Nineteen Thirty-Six." With an additional presentation inscription by Beinecke to the front free endpaper, and Beinecke's own gilt and red leather bookplate to the front pastedown.

The story tracks a Salinas Valley intellectual who refuses every form of upward economic mobility, raises his son in studied poverty, and is shamed into leaving the valley after the school board's clumsy charity toward his ragged child; the 1936 epilogue, unique to this printing, restores father and son to their idyllic life in the Pastures. Pynson Printers, the New York fine-press shop run by Elmer Adler, produced the book as a Christmas keepsake for a small group of subscribing collectors who paid for blocks of copies to give as gifts.

SKU TO-2026-090