Carol and John Steinbeck

Portrait of a Marriage

Susan Shillinglaw

• Publisher: University of Nevada Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780874179316
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Biografie in ambito letterario

Carol Henning Steinbeck, writer John Steinbeck's first wife, was his creative anchor, the inspiration for his great work of the 1930s, culminating in The Grapes of Wrath. Meeting at Lake Tahoe in 1928, their attachment was immediate, their personalities meshing in creative synergy. Carol was unconventional, artistic, and compelling. In the formative years of Steinbeck's career, living in San Francisco, Pacific Grove, Los Gatos, and Monterey, their Modernist circle included Ed Ricketts, Joseph Campbell, and Lincoln Steffens. In many ways Carol's story is all too familiar: a creative and intelligent woman subsumes her own life and work into that of her husband. Together, they brought forth one of the enduring novels of the 20th century.

Notes

Interviews and letters are cited in the notes, as are newspaper articles contained in archives. The first time a letter to a recipient is cited, I indicate the archive. Since Steinbeck did not date most of his early letters, I have not included notes for letters when the recipient is clear in the text and when no further information can be given. If a Steinbeck letter is included in A Life in Letters, I cite only the page number in that text (LL). Letters from John Steinbeck to his sister Mary Dekker are from the Dekker archive and are quoted with permission from Toni Heyler. Letters and notebooks of Edward F. Ricketts in the Ed Ricketts Jr. collection are quoted by permission of Ed Ricketts Jr. The material attributed to Joseph Campbell's journals comes from an unpublished manuscript for a work of fiction developed by Campbell and is quoted under license by the Joseph Campbell Foundation. When an interviewer is not identified, the interview is by me. For these I have included the name of the person interviewed, if not identified in the text, and the date(s) of the interview only the first time the person is quoted. All interviews conducted by others are identified as such. These are generally from two sources: Benson interviews housed at Stanford University Special Collections, and the Pauline Pearson/George Robinson interviews housed at the National Steinbeck Center, Salinas.

Material quoted is from the following archives, identified briefly in the notes as follows. I wish to thank each library, as well as Steinbeck's literary agents, McIntosh and Otis, and his longtime publisher, Viking Penguin, for permission to quote from published and unpublished material.

Bancroft: Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley

Albee Papers: George Sumner Albee Papers, BANC MSS C-H 120

Jackson Papers: J. H. Jackson Papers, BANC MSS C-H 40

Steinbeck: John Steinbeck Letters and Manuscripts, 1938–1963, BANC MSS 70/124

CB archive: Carol Henning Brown archive, Center for Steinbeck Studies, San Jose State University

CSS: Center for Steinbeck Studies, San Jose State University

Morgan: Pierpont Morgan Library Department of Literary and Historical Manuscripts

NSC: National Steinbeck Center, Salinas

Powell Papers: Lawrence Clark Powell Papers Concerning John Steinbeck, 1935–1941, Houghton Library, Harvard University

Ransom: Harry Ransom Center Book Collection, University of Texas at Austin, John Steinbeck Collection, 1926–1977. HCR, MS, Steinbeck, John

Small: Papers of John Steinbeck, MS 6239, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia

Stanford: Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries

Wells Fargo: Wells Fargo Steinbeck Collection, M1063

JS: John Steinbeck Collection, MO263

S-A: Steinbeck-Ainsworth collection, MO263

ER Papers: Edward Flanders Ricketts Papers, M0291

JJB: Jackson J. Benson, True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer research materials, 1935–1980, MO522

Williams: Annie Laurie Williams Collection, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Butler Library, Columbia University

Wulf: William A. Wulf historical papers, private collection

ABBREVIATIONS

AA:	America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction
ER:	Edward Ricketts
GOW:	The Grapes of Wrath
JS:	John Steinbeck
LL:	A Life in Letters
LSOC:	Log from the Sea of Cortez
LVL:	Long Valley Ledger
TC:	Tom Collins

The page numbers below refer to the print version of the text, not the electronic version.

INTRODUCTION

1 “had a blockbuster”: Viking files.

1 “purchase it for circulation”: French, Companion, 130.

1 “wrathy”: Frank Taylor, “California's ‘Grapes,’” 232.

1 “line must be drawn somewhere”: Bob Work, “Editorially Speaking,” Spartan Daily, May 29, 1939, 2.

1 “unfit for patrons”: “‘Grapes of Wrath’ Under Library's Ban at San Jose,” San Jose Mercury News, June 29, 1939, Carol Henning Brown archive (uncatalogued), Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies, San Jose State University (hereafter cited as CB archive).

1 “letter to the Kansas City school board”: See Rick Wartzman, Obscene in the Extreme, 10.

2 “distorted mind”: French, Companion, 125, 126.

2 “what I am going to do”: JS to Tom Collins, n.d. JJB, author's files (hereafter cited as JS to TC; letters fr...