New York: Covici Friede, 1937. First edition. A true first printing with the textual points on p. 9 and 88 as well as the priced dust jacket (avoid any dust jacket that doesn't retain the original price, $2.00). Octavo. Original buff cloth, spine and front cover stamped in orange and black, top-edge stained blue. A Near Fine copy in like dust jacket. Spine a bit rolled, a few faint spots of foxing to the closed text block, slight separation at the half title. Old bookseller's ticket to the rear paste-down. Dust jacket with the spine a bit toned and a small nick at the top of the rear panel.

One of just 2500 copies and becoming scarce in this condition. Steinbeck's tragic novella portraying the life of two migrant farm-hands in California, unlikely friends cherishing the common dream of a better life. When George realizes that Lennie's childlike understanding of the world has led to irreparable violence, George ends Lennie's life as mercifully as he can before the arrival of a lynch mob. "If the story were callously told, the conclusion might be unbearable. But Mr. Steinbeck has told it with both passion and dexterity. The patient comradeship is developed in a series of homely episodes, conveyed in the vernacular of two lonely men blundering about their small world...Of Mice and Men is the dark side of an idyll" (Atkinson, contemporary NYT review). One of the author's most profound works.

Goldstone & Payne A7a. Near Fine in Near Fine dust jacket. (Item #5727)