The Pearl

STEINBECK, John.

The Pearl.

FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING. New York: The Viking Press, December 1947.

Small 8vo. [4], 122, [2] pp. With drawings throughout by José Clemente Orozco. Original cloth, the front board with a stamped illustration in black, spine lettered in gilt on a black ground, top edge stained green as issued. In the original unclipped first-issue dust jacket priced $2.00 on the front flap — the pearl-scalloped teal panel on a rust-red ground, the rear panel with the sepia portrait of Steinbeck (credited "Photo by Breitenbach"), Steinbeck facing to his own left, the first-issue point. Goldstone & Payne A25a. In its original first-issue jacket, protected in an archival sleeve.

Steinbeck's most-read shorter work, and the only one of his books illustrated by José Clemente Orozco — the great Mexican muralist, then in the last years of his life, whose black-ink figure drawings carry the parable's weight as much as the prose does. Set on the Baja California coast near La Paz, The Pearl follows Kino, his wife Juana, and their infant son Coyotito after Kino finds the great pearl — and learns that everything around him will rearrange itself to take it from him.

SKU TO-2026-144