Grapes of Wrath: Text and Criticism (Revised)

Description: John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression follows the western moevement of wone family and a nation in search of work and human dignity. This completely updated Viking Critical Library Edition of The Grapes of Wrath includes the full text of the novel, corrected in 1996, as well as extensive and contextual material including:

• Essays placing The Grapes of Wrath in social context, including a 1942 essay by Carey McWilliams about migrant workers and working conditions and a Martin Schockley piece on the reception of The Grapes of Wrath in Oklahoma
• Eight new essays by John Ditsky, Nellie Y. McKay, MimiReisel Gladstein, Louis Owens, and others
• An essay on the background to the composition of The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck's biographer, Jackson J. Benson
• An introduction by the editor, a chronology, a list of topics for discussion and papers, and a bibliography

Review Quotes: "It is Steinbeck's best novel, i.e., his toughest and tenderest, his roughest written and most mellifluous, his most realistic and, in its ending, his most melodramatic, his angriest and most idyllic. It is great in the way that Unlce Tom's Cabin was great. One of the most impassioned and exciting books of the year." --Time

"One comes away moved, indignant, protesting, pitying. A fiery document of protest and compassion, as a story that had to be told, as a book that must be read." --Louis Kronenberger, The Nation