Of Mice and Men
By John Steinbeck
 
First UK edition. London & Toronto: William Heinemann Ltd, 1937. With decorations by Michael Rothenstein

Octavo. Original turquoise cloth, spine lettered in gilt, the Heinemann windmill device blind-stamped to the lower board, top edge stained red, pink endpapers. Preserved in the original, unclipped pictorial dust jacket, priced 6s. net to the lower front flap, the front panel printed in orange-red and black after a line drawing by Rothenstein of George Milton and Lennie Small.

Very good. A little spotting, off-setting and faint browning to the endpapers and paste-downs; a slight lean to the spine; light toning to the edges. The boards and text block otherwise clean and fresh.

The dust jacket very good, with chipping to the spine tips and corners, toning to the spine panel and margins of the flaps, a soft crease to the corner of the lower flap, a small hole at the upper panel hinge and a short tear to the head.

Steinbeck's account of the itinerant ranch hands George and Lennie was issued in New York by Covici-Friede early in 1937; this Heinemann edition, the first to appear in Britain, carries decorations by Michael Rothenstein throughout. Steinbeck's own dramatisation opened on Broadway that November and was awarded the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play the following spring; the 1939 film, directed by Lewis Milestone and starring Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney Jr., received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture.
 
The novel's closing episode, in which George kills Lennie to spare him a crueler death at the hands of others - echoing an earlier scene in which an ageing dog is shot by a fellow ranch hand - has been discussed by critics and educators as an early and enduring literary treatment of mercy killing; it is cited among the grounds on which the American Library Association records it as one of the most frequently challenged texts in American schools and libraries.