Cannery Row was published by The Viking Press, New York, on 2 January 1945, in a first printing of approximately 75,000 copies priced at $2.00. The novel was Steinbeck’s first book after the war-era works (The Moon Is Down, Bombs Away) and represents a deliberate retreat from the ambitious social realism of The Grapes of Wrath into something warmer, smaller, and more affectionate. It was a commercial success and remains one of Steinbeck’s most beloved books, though critics at the time considered it minor.
The Novel
Cannery Row has no conventional plot. It is a series of loosely connected episodes set on Ocean View Avenue in Monterey, California, among the workers, bums, prostitutes, and eccentrics who inhabit the sardine cannery district. The central figures are: Mack and the boys — a group of amiable drifters who live in a converted fish-meal shack they call the Palace Flophouse; Doc (modelled on Steinbeck’s close friend, the marine biologist Ed Ricketts) — who runs Western Biological Laboratory, collects specimens, plays classical records, and serves as the community’s intellectual and moral centre; and Dora Flood — the madam of the Bear Flag Restaurant (a brothel), who runs her business with practical compassion.
The novel’s action — such as it is — follows Mack and the boys’ two attempts to throw a party for Doc. The first is a disaster (Doc is away; the party destroys his laboratory). The second succeeds gloriously. Between these events, Steinbeck inserts “inter-chapters” — short sketches of other Cannery Row inhabitants that are among his finest prose: the old Chinese man who walks through town at dusk; the boy who finds the flagpole skater; the soldier and the girl in the car lot.
Collecting Cannery Row
First edition (1945, The Viking Press): Approximately 75,000 copies, priced at $2.00.
Identification points:
- “First published by The Viking Press in January 1945” on the copyright page
- Yellow/tan cloth boards with red lettering
First edition, first printing:
- Fine/Fine in dust jacket: $1,000–$3,000
- Near Fine in jacket: $400–$1,000
- Without jacket: $50–$150
Signed copies: Steinbeck signed regularly. Signed first editions: $2,000–$5,000.
Value trajectory (2016–2026): Approximately 1.5× for fine copies in jacket. The large first printing limits scarcity, but the novel’s enduring popularity sustains demand.
Projected values (2026–2036): Modest appreciation. Cannery Row will always be a popular Steinbeck title, but its large print run prevents it from reaching the prices of Grapes of Wrath or Of Mice and Men firsts. Fine signed copies in jacket should reach $6,000–$10,000.
Ed Ricketts and the Ecology of Cannery Row
Doc is based on Edward F. Ricketts (1897–1948), the marine biologist who was Steinbeck’s closest friend and intellectual collaborator. Ricketts’s book Between Pacific Tides (1939) pioneered the ecological approach to marine biology — studying organisms in their habitats rather than in taxonomic isolation. This ecological thinking permeates Cannery Row: Steinbeck observes his human community the way Ricketts observed tidal pools, cataloguing specimens without moral judgment, noting relationships and symbioses. The “inter-chapters” function like Ricketts’s field notes — brief, precise observations of organisms in their environments.
Ricketts died in a car accident at a railroad crossing in Monterey in May 1948. Steinbeck was devastated; he later said he had lost the person who understood him best. Cannery Row and its sequel Sweet Thursday (1954) are, among other things, memorials to Ricketts and to the world of Ocean View Avenue before the sardines disappeared and the tourists arrived.
The Disappearance of Cannery Row
The real Cannery Row was already dying when Steinbeck wrote about it. The Pacific sardine population collapsed in the late 1940s — a combination of overfishing and oceanic temperature changes — and the canneries closed one by one. By the 1960s, the district was a row of rusting buildings. The transformation into a tourist destination began in the 1970s, and today Cannery Row is home to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, souvenir shops, and restaurants. Ed Ricketts’s lab at 800 Cannery Row still stands, marked with a plaque. The gap between Steinbeck’s vivid, frowzy, alive district and the sanitised tourist zone it became is one of the more melancholy ironies of American literary geography.
Critical Reception and Legacy
Contemporary reviews were mixed. Edmund Wilson, in The New Yorker, called it “meagre”; Orville Prescott in the New York Times found it “sentimental.” The common complaint was that after The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck was retreating into charm. But subsequent critics have been kinder. The novel’s influence on American fiction about marginal communities — from the Beats to Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son — is considerable, and its technical achievement in sustaining a plotless narrative through voice alone has been widely admired by writers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Cannery Row set in a real place? Yes. Ocean View Avenue (renamed Cannery Row in 1958 in the novel’s honour) in Monterey, California. The sardine canning industry collapsed in the late 1940s; the area is now a tourist district centred on the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Ed Ricketts’s laboratory at 800 Cannery Row still stands.
Is this a minor Steinbeck? Critics often dismiss it as lightweight compared to The Grapes of Wrath. But its admirers — including many writers — regard it as Steinbeck at his most technically accomplished: every sentence earns its place, and the apparent looseness conceals rigorous craft. It is the Steinbeck novel that other novelists most often cite as a favourite.
What is the relationship to Sweet Thursday? Sweet Thursday (1954) is a direct sequel, set on the same street with many of the same characters. It was written partly to serve as the basis for a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical (Pipe Dream, 1955). Most readers consider it markedly inferior to Cannery Row — more contrived, more sentimental, less structurally inventive.
Why are there “inter-chapters”? Steinbeck used the inter-chapter technique in The Grapes of Wrath (alternating Joad family chapters with panoramic Depression chapters) and adapted it here. The inter-chapters in Cannery Row serve multiple purposes: they widen the scope beyond Mack and the boys, they provide tonal variation, and they allow Steinbeck to write prose poems — the old Chinese man, the flagpole skater — that are among his finest passages.