GOLDSTONE, Adrian H.; PAYNE, John R.
John Steinbeck: A Bibliographical Catalogue of the Adrian H. Goldstone Collection.
FIRST EDITION, ONE OF 1,200 — CO-AUTHOR PAYNE'S OWN COPY, INSCRIBED THE DAY HE SENT COPY ONE TO GOLDSTONE. Austin: Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin, 1974.
Octavo. 240 pp. Frontispiece portrait of Steinbeck. Original tan cloth lettered in black; in the original clear acetate jacket. Co-author John R. Payne's own copy, with his engraved bookplate to the front free endpaper and boldly inscribed by him in black ink across the half-title: "August 15, 1974 / Second copy from the Press. / Sent copy one to Adrian / this morning. / John R. Payne." Hand-titled "Steinbeck" on the acetate spine in Payne's hand. Near fine: cloth bright and unmarked, hinges firm, contents clean throughout; the acetate jacket present with light wear, some toning, a tear at the lower spine, and a small piece missing to the upper rear cover (the book itself unaffected).
Goldstone assembled what was for decades the finest private Steinbeck collection in existence; in 1974 it passed to the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin (now the Harry Ransom Center), and Payne, then a librarian there, produced this catalogue documenting it. G&P describes virtually every collectible Steinbeck edition with bibliographic precision — including the hard-to-identify book club editions and the foreign translations — and has remained the working bibliography of the trade for half a century.
This is the co-author's own copy. Payne's inscription, written the day he sent copy one to Goldstone, places it second in the sequence in which the 1,200 copies left the press — and records the moment a forty-year California collection, catalogued from Texas, was made permanent in print. Inscribed copies of G&P are uncommon; one that is also the co-author's working copy, dated within the production sequence, is a singular survival.
SKU TO-2026-027
