Cannery Row. -

n.p. (NY), n.p. (The Viking Press), n.d. (1944), first edition, wrappers. Softcover.. Advance copy, an uncorrected galley proof, bound in plain, unprinted tannish wrappers, printed on rectos only, a very scarce advanced state of this minor, or not so minor, Steinbeck masterpiece whose themes of death and loneliness are masked by its surface layer of humor, all the more rare in that this is an Author Presentation Copy, Inscribed by Steinbeck to the best man at his second marriage, Howard O. Hunter, who was the Works Progress Administration (WPA) commissioner in the early 1940s under the FDR administration, Steinbeck and his second wife, Gwen Conger, were married March 29, 1943, just 11 days after receiving his final divorce decree from his first wife, Carol, Steinbeck has Inscribed the first preliminary as follows, "For Howard/who really/belongs in/Cannery Row/John Steinbeck/last night in New York 1944," this galley lacks all the preliminaries found in the 1945 published version such as half titles, title page, copyright page, dedication page, etc., although not specifically cited in Goldstone & Payne, there is a notation under G&P A22a that "a copy of the unrevised galley proofs is in the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas," see Morrow 172 (that copy with a yellow label on front giving publication date and price that is not on this copy--the Morrow copy was not signed or inscribed), now housed in a beautiful custom clamshell case with leather spine, laid in loosely is a letter of provenance from Ellen Leonard who was given this proof by Hunter's wife, Edna. This was bound for in-house use by Viking and not for sale, thus it was never meant to be in great condition even when new, spine ends are chipped, there is offsetting from printed pages onto the previous verso, some pages are becoming dis-bound.