Of Mice and Men: A Play in Three Acts.

First edition of the dramatic version of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, wittily inscribed by him. Octavo, original publisher's cloth. Lengthily signed by the author and also initialed on the half-title, “by an author in 1 Act. John Steinbeck (a walking mouse who dances from man to mouse) J.S.” Steinbeck adapted his celebrated 1937 novel for the stage the same year, and the play opened on Broadway that November. From the library of Otis L. Guernsey Jr. (1918-2001), the distinguished American drama and film critic and, for more than three decades, editor of the Best Plays theatre yearbook. Guernsey spent nineteen years at the New York Herald Tribune, rising from copy boy to become the paper’s film and drama critic and arts editor, before taking over the Best Plays series in 1964 and editing some thirty-six annual volumes, an unrivaled record of the American stage. As one of the foremost theatre critics of his generation, he moved in the same New York literary and theatrical world in which Steinbeck, whose novels and plays were mainstays of stage and screen, loomed so large. Near fine in a very good dust jacket. Housed in a custom half morocco and folding chemise slipcase. A wonderful signed and playfully inscribed copy.