THE LIBRARY OF AMERICA
The Library of America, a nonprofit publisher and educational outreach entity, was founded in 1979 with grants from the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Although its mission was a well-grounded and no-nonsense business approach to publishing, it essentially was fulfilling a long-held dream by the great critic Edmund Wilson and others. The United States of America, they felt, ought to have a publications series of high standards and high quality of production for its national literature, and it ought to reflect the diversity and traditions of all of its writing.
The first books appeared in 1982, when I first began selling new books in an independent book store here in Carlisle. (The founding of Whistlestop Bookshop was three years away.) I still have my copies of Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman. I won’t tell you how many of the 300+ to date I have acquired, but I am happy to say I never regretted one. The books are remarkably beautiful and efficient and scholarly and finely-made. They are sometimes the only respectable edition available (beware of photo-offset print-on-demand editions!). The accompanying chronologies and notes and textual discussions of every volume are a joy and an education. I cannot praise them too highly.
This listing is what I carry in the store. If you would like other volumes, send me an e-mail or call the store. Enjoy browsing, buying, and owning landmark definitive editions of great writers or great American subjects.
The listings are alphabetical by author except for new or recent anthologies at the top. Older anthologies are at the bottom of the page.
All James Baldwin titles and Ursula K. Le Guin titles are on the respective pages of the authors.
The John Steinbeck Collection: 4 volume boxed set
The John Steinbeck Collection: 4 volume boxed set
TThe Library of America presents its authoritative four-volume edition of an American master in deluxe collector’s boxed set.
Includes The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mine and Men, East of Eden, and 15 other classic Steinbeck books.
Here for the first time is Library of America’s authoritative four-volume John Steinbeck edition in deluxe collector’s boxed set. 18 complete works in all:
Novels & Stories 1932–1937
The Pastures of Heaven • To a God Unknown • Tortilla Flat • In Dubious Battle • Of Mice and Men
The Grapes of Wrath & Other Writings 1936–1941
The Grapes of Wrath • The Long Valley • The Log from the Sea of Cortez • The Harvest Gypsies
Novels 1942–1952
The Moon Is Down • Cannery Row • The Pearl • East of Eden
Travels with Charley & Later Novels 1947–1962
The Wayward Bus • Burning Bright • Sweet Thursday • The Winter of Our Discontent • Travels with Charley in Search of America
Each cloth hardcover volume comes complete with helpful annotation, detailed textual essays, and a chronology of Steinbeck’s remarkable life and career.