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The Grapes of Wrath First Edition Guide — Identification, Values, and Steinbeck's American Epic

Approx. 4 min read · 1 May 2026

John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is the great American novel of the Depression era — a raw, angry, compassionate account of the Joad family’s migration from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to the promised land of California. Published by The Viking Press, the novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1940 and was cited when Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. The first edition is one of the most important and collectible American literary first editions of the twentieth century.

Publication History

Publisher: The Viking Press, New York

Publication date: April 14, 1939

Price: $2.75

First printing: Approximately 50,000 copies (a very large first printing, reflecting Viking’s confidence in the novel and Steinbeck’s established reputation after Of Mice and Men)

Sales: Over 430,000 copies sold in the first year alone. The novel became the bestselling book of 1939.

Controversy: The novel was banned, burned, and denounced by agricultural interests, political figures, and various organizations who considered it propaganda. The Associated Farmers of California called it “obscene sensationalism.”

First Edition Identification

Copyright Page

The first edition/first printing states:

First Published in April 1939

The words “FIRST EDITION” also appear on the copyright page of first printings. Second and subsequent printings add printing information.

Binding

Beige/tan pictorial cloth boards — the front board features an illustration of a plow. The cloth color and illustration style are distinctive and cannot be confused with later editions.

Dust Jacket

The first edition dust jacket was designed by Elmer Hader:

Front panel: Bold illustration of a family on the road, with the title in large red letters.

Spine: Red and black text on a lighter background.

Price: $2.75 on the front flap.

The jacket design captures the novel’s themes — migration, hardship, and the open road — in a single powerful image.

Issue Points

“First Published in April 1939” vs. “First Edition.” Both statements should appear on the copyright page of first printings.

The “first issue” dust jacket. There is debate among bibliographers about minor jacket variants, but the primary identifier remains the copyright page text.

Market Values

First edition/first printing with dust jacket:

Fine/Near Fine condition: $15,000–$40,000
Very Good condition: $8,000–$20,000
Good condition: $4,000–$10,000

First edition/first printing without dust jacket:

Fine condition: $500–$1,500

The relatively large first printing (50,000 copies) means that copies without jackets are not uncommon. The dust jacket is the critical value component.

Signed copies: Steinbeck signed books, though not in enormous quantities. Signed first editions are scarce and valuable — typically $25,000–$75,000 or more depending on condition and inscription.

Steinbeck Collecting

The Grapes of Wrath sits at the center of a major collecting field:

Key Steinbeck first editions:

Cup of Gold (1929, McBride) — Steinbeck’s first novel, scarce
Tortilla Flat (1935, Covici-Friede) — first commercial success
Of Mice and Men (1937, Covici-Friede) — the companion masterpiece
The Grapes of Wrath (1939, Viking) — the summit
East of Eden (1952, Viking) — Steinbeck’s most ambitious later novel
Cannery Row (1945, Viking)

Of Mice and Men is the second most valuable Steinbeck first edition and is often collected alongside The Grapes of Wrath. The Covici-Friede first edition (1937) is identified by the publisher’s logo of a greyhound on the title page.

Collecting Notes

The large first printing is both a blessing and a challenge. With 50,000 copies printed, first edition copies without jackets are available in the $500–$1,500 range — affordable for many collectors. But the jacket transforms the value, and Fine jacketed copies are genuinely scarce.

The pictorial binding. The tan cloth with plow illustration is a distinctive feature of the first edition. Later editions have different bindings.

Condition issues. The light-colored cloth shows soiling easily. The binding illustrations can fade. Dust jackets from 1939, particularly the red lettering, are prone to fading.

Limited Editions Club (1940). The Limited Editions Club issued a signed, illustrated edition with lithographs by Thomas Hart Benton. This is a separate collectible item, not the trade first edition, but is valuable in its own right.

Film tie-in. The 1940 John Ford film starring Henry Fonda further cemented the novel’s cultural status. There are no film tie-in variants of the first edition, but later printings with movie-related jacket copy exist and should not be confused with first printings.