In Monterey, on the California coast, Sweet Thursday is what they call the day after Lousy Wednesday, which is one of those days that are just naturally bad. Returning to the scene of "Cannery Row"?the weedy lots and junk heaps and flophouses of Monterey, John Steinbeck once more brings to life the denizens of a netherworld of laughter and tears?from Fauna, new headmistress of the local brothel, to Hazel, a bum whose mother must have wanted a daughter.

Penguin publishes forty-five of the nation’s top 100 favourite titles. If you haven’t read them yet, then now’s your chance to enjoy some of the nation’s favourite reads in our special 3-for-2 offer.

Choose any three titles from The Big Read promotion and get the cheapest one FREE.

Please note: Your shopping basket will show the list price of each item with a subtotal and your discount will be applied at the checkout.

'I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.' Shocking and controversial when it was first published in 1939, Steinbeck's Pulitzer prize-winning epic, The Grapes of Wrath, remains his undisputed masterpiece. Set against the background of Dust Bowl Oklahoma and Californian migrant life, it tells of the Joad family, who, like thousands of others, are forced to travel west in search of the promised land. Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted desires and broken dreams, yet out of their suffering Steinbeck created a drama that is intensely human, yet majestic in its scale and moral vision; an eloquent tribute to the endurance and dignity of the human spirit.

Set in familiar Steinbeck territory, To a God Unknown is a mystical tale, exploring one man's attempt to control the forces of nature and, ultimately, to understand the ways of God.

'I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.' Shocking and controversial when it was first published, The Grapes of Wrath is Steinbeck's Pultizer Prize-winning epic of the Joad family, forced to travel west from Dust Bowl era Oklahoma in search of the promised land of California. Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted desires and powerlessness, yet out of their struggle Steinbeck created a drama that is both intensely human and majestic in its scale and moral vision.

In Steinbeck's Imaginarium, Robert DeMott delves into the imaginative, creative, and sometimes neglected aspects of John Steinbeck's writing. DeMott positions Steinbeck as a prophetic voice for today as much as he was for the Depression-era 1930s as the essays explore the often unknown or unacknowledged elements of Steinbeck's artistic career that deserve closer attention. He writes about the determining scientific influences, such as quantum physics and ecology, in Cannery Row and considers Steinbeck's addiction to writing through the lens of the extensive, obsessive full-length journals that he kept while writing three of his best-known novels--The Grapes of Wrath, The Wayward Bus, and East of Eden. DeMott insists that these monumental works of fiction all comprise important statements on his creative process and his theory of fiction writing. DeMott further blends his personal experience as a lifelong angler with a reading of several neglected fishing episodes in Steinbeck's work. Collectively, the chapters illuminate John Steinbeck as a fully conscious, self-aware, literate, experimental novelist whose talents will continue to warrant study and admiration for years to come.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized--and sometimes outraged--millions of readers.
First published in 1939, Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads-driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity.
A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man's fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman's stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America.
"The Grapes of Wrath" summed up its era in the way that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" summed up the years of slavery before the Civil War. Sensitive to fascist and communist criticism, Steinbeck insisted that "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" be printed in its entirety in the first edition of the book--which takes its title from the first verse: "He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored." At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck's powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.
This edition contains an introduction and notes by Steinbeck scholar Robert Demott.

"Deep down it's mine, right to the center of the world", says a Salinas Valley farmer about his land in John Steinbeck's To a God Unknown, and Steinbeck the writer could have said the same. From the very start of his career he evoked the landscapes and people of central California with lyrical intensity and unflinching frankness. Through his intimate rendering of that place and those people, he expressed his abiding concerns: community, social justice, and the elemental connection between nature and human society. Here for the first time in one volume are Steinbeck's early California writings. In prose that blends the vernacular and the incantatory, the local and the mythic, these five works chart Steinbeck's evolution into one of the greatest and most enduringly popular of American novelists. The Pastures of Heaven (1932), a collection of interrelated stories, delineates the troubled inner lives and sometimes disastrous fates of families living in a seemingly tranquil California valley. The surface realism of Steinbeck's first mature work is enriched by hints of uncanny forces at work beneath. A sense of primeval magic dominates To a God Unknown (1933), as a California farmer reverts to pagan nature worship and begins a tortuous journey toward catastrophe and ultimate understanding. Steinbeck's sympathetic depiction of the raffish paisanos of Tortilla Flat (1935), a ramshackle district above Monterey, first won him popular attention. The Flat's tenderhearted, resourceful, mildly corrupt, ever-optimistic characters are a triumph of life-affirming humor. In Dubious Battle (1936) plunges into the political struggle of the 1930s, painting a vigorous fresco of a migrant fruit-picker'sstrike. Anticipating the collective portraiture of The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck poignantly traces the surges and shifts of group behavior. With Of Mice and Men (1937), Steinbeck secured his status as one of the most influential American writers. Lenny and George, itinerant farmhands held together in the face of deprivation only by the frailest of dreams, have long since passed into American mythology. This novel, which Steinbeck called "such a simple little thing", is now recognized as a masterpiece of concentrated emotional power.

Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America's greatest writers and cultural figures. Over the next year, his many works published as black-spine Penguin Classics for the first time and will feature eye-catching, newly commissioned art.

Of this initial group of six titles, "The Grapes of Wrath" is in a new edition with a completely revised introduction and, for the first time, detailed notes by leading Steinbeck scholar Robert DeMott.

Penguin Classics is proud to present these seminal works to a new generation of readers -- and to the many who revisit them again and again.

One of Steinbeck's earliest novels, To a God Unknown powerfully explores man's relationship to nature and to destiny.

With his father's reluctant blessing, Joseph Wayne leaves the family home in Vermont and travels West to fulfil his dream of creating a prosperous farm. Settling in an idyllic Californian valley, Joseph comes to believe that a magnificent oak tree that hangs over his new house embodies his father's spirit. Joseph invites his brothers and their families to join him and the farm flourishes. Then one brother, frightened by what he thinks are Joseph's pagan beliefs, destroys the tree ...

" Steinbeck's Typewriter: Essays on His Art] collects several of DeMott's finest essays on Steinbeck... that are] so carefully revised as to warn other critics seeking their own 'collected essay' volume of the difference between a genuinely lapidary compilation and a kitchen midden. Illustrated with some rare photos, this collection is especially notable..." --John Ditsky, Choice

..".Steinbeck's Typewriter... stands as the most in-depth treatment of Steinbeck's aesthetics, particularly in its exploration of the author's 'interior spaces and creative habits, ' elements of Steinbeck's artistry which have not only been underestimated but woefully ignored." --Stephen George, Steinbeck Review

John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath during an astonishing burst of activity between June and October of 1938. Throughout the time he was creating his greatest work, Steinbeck faithfully kept a journal revealing his arduous journey toward its completion.

The journal, like the novel it chronicles, tells a tale of dramatic proportions--of dogged determination and inspiration, yet also of paranoia, self-doubt, and obstacles. It records in intimate detail the conception and genesis of The Grapes of Wrath and its huge though controversial success. It is a unique and penetrating portrait of an emblematic American writer creating an essential American masterpiece.

Conversations with Jim Harrison, Revised and Updated offers a judicious selection of interviews spanning the writing career of Jim Harrison (1937-2016) from its beginnings in the 1960s to the last interview he gave weeks before his death in March 2016. Harrison labeled himself and lived as a ""quadra schizoid"" writer. He worked in fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and screenwriting, and he published more than forty books that attracted an international following. These interviews supply a lively narrative of his progress as a major contemporary American author. This collection showcases Harrison's pet peeves, his candor and humility, his sense of humor, and his patience. He does not shy from his authorial obsessions, especially his efforts to hone the novella, for which he is considered a contemporary master, or the frequency with which he defied polite narrative conventions and created memorable, resolute female characters. Each conversation attests to the depth and range of Harrison's considerable intellectual and political preoccupations, his fierce social and ecological conscience, his aesthetic beliefs, and his stylistic orientations in poetry and prose.

Conversations with Jim Harrison, Revised and Updated offers a judicious selection of interviews spanning the writing career of Jim Harrison (1937-2016) from its beginnings in the 1960s to the last interview he gave weeks before his death in March 2016. Harrison labeled himself and lived as a ""quadra schizoid"" writer. He worked in fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and screenwriting, and he published more than forty books that attracted an international following. These interviews supply a lively narrative of his progress as a major contemporary American author. This collection showcases Harrison's pet peeves, his candor and humility, his sense of humor, and his patience. He does not shy from his authorial obsessions, especially his efforts to hone the novella, for which he is considered a contemporary master, or the frequency with which he defied polite narrative conventions and created memorable, resolute female characters. Each conversation attests to the depth and range of Harrison's considerable intellectual and political preoccupations, his fierce social and ecological conscience, his aesthetic beliefs, and his stylistic orientations in poetry and prose.

Jim Harrison (b. 1937) is well known for his blunt, brave style in prose, poetry, screenplays, and nonfiction. In "Conversations with Jim Harrison," the Michigan-born writer's directness and passion shine throughout.

"Conversations with Jim Harrison" is the first-ever collection of interviews by this well-known, prolific writer whose books include twenty-two volumes of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction published over a period of thirty-six years. In addition to standard literary forms, he has written sporting essays, reviews, literary journalism, food columns, and almost twenty screenplays.

Harrison, a writer devoted to small presses and independent bookstores, has a formidable reputation as a recluse and defender of his privacy. However, he has been open to interviews in America and abroad, particularly in France, where he is very popular.

"Conversations with Jim Harrison" features interviews given between 1976 and 1999. Although the conversations vary in length, most are traditional questions and answers. In these Harrison has the opportunity to develop his responses fully and cover a wider range of topics than he can in the briefer, profile pieces.

Harrison discusses his peripatetic early life, his desire to be a poet since he was sixteen, and his subsequent "quadra schizoid" attraction to writing poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and screenplays.

A literary outsider who prefers rural life Harrison talks in detail about his colorful, eventful life. He also explores the mutual enrichment he received from nature and civilization.

He talks specifically about a number of his important books-- including "Wolf," "Legends of the Fall," "Sundog," "Warlock," and "The RoadHome," Harrison speaks eloquently about habits of mind, aesthetic choices, intellectual resources, and psychological contexts in his writing. By turns thoughtful, cantankerous, witty, and erudite, his voice reveals a man fully given over to the single-minded pursuit of the art of writing.

Robert DeMott is the Edwin and Ruth Kennedy Distinguished Professor of English at Ohio University in Athens. His recent books include "Steinbeck's Typewriter: Essays on His Art" (1996), "Dave Smith: A Literary Archive" (2000), and "The Weather in Athens" (2001).

Seventeen hunter-scholars explore the hunting experience and question common negative stereotypes Despite the academy having a reputation for supporting broad and open inquiry in scholarship, some academics have not extended this open-minded support to colleagues' personal pursuits. A variety of scholars enjoy hunting, which has been stereotyped by some as an activity of the unsophisticated. In Hunting and the Ivory Tower, Douglas Higbee and David Bruzina present essays by seventeen hunter-scholars who explore the hunting experience and question negative assumptions about hunting made by intellectuals and academics who do not hunt. Higbee and Bruzina suspect most academics' understanding of hunting is based on brief television news reports of hunter-politicians and commercials for reality TV shows such as Duck Dynasty. The editors contend that few scholars appreciate the complexities of hunting or give much thought to its ethical, ecological, and cultural ramifications. Through this anthology they hope to start a conversation about both hunting and academia and how they relate. The contributors to this anthology, all academics from a variety of disciplines, have firsthand hunting experience. Their essays vary in style and tone from the scholarly to the personal and represent the different ways in which scholars engage with their avocation. The essays are grouped into three sections: the first focuses on the often-fraught relation between hunters and academic culture; the second section offers personal accounts of hunting by academics; and the third portrays hunting from an explicitly academic point of view, whether in terms of value theory, metaphysics, or history. Combined, these essays render hunting as a culturally rich, deeply personal, and intellectually satisfying experience worthy of further discussion. A foreword is provided by Robert DeMott, the Edwin and Ruth Kennedy Distinguished Professor at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. He is a teacher, writer, critic, and internationally respected expert on novelist John Steinbeck.