THE RED PONY by STEINBECK, JOHN - 1945

New York: The Viking Press, 1945. First Edition with these Illustrations. 245 x 170 mm. (9 5/8 x 6 5/8"). 131, [1] pp.
Publisher's tan cloth, color illustration on paper mounted on front board and framed in blue, blue vertical title label on spine, pictorial endpapers, all edges blue. In the original (slightly worn) gray cardboard slipcase with color illustration mounted on one side. With eight color vignettes and five color plates by Wesley Dennis. Front pastedown with a color reproduction of the movie poster for the 1949 film based on the book tipped on.
◆Gutter partly open at half title, otherwise an excellent copy, quite clean, fresh, and bright inside and out.

This is an attractively illustrated edition of Steinbeck's coming-of-age novella set on a California ranch in the early years of the 20th century. The four episodes that comprise the tale were separately published as stories in periodicals between 1933 and 1937, with the work first appearing in book form in 1937. The present edition is enhanced with color illustrations by American artist Wesley Dennis (1903-66), who specialized in children's books about horses, making him the perfect choice to bring the hero Jody and his horses to life. John Steinbeck (1902-68) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception." His fiction, mostly set in the Western United States, is a fixture in the American literary canon..