Fragment of Of Mice and Men Original Manuscript Sold for $13,000, Steinbeck's Sword for $3,500

A fragment of John Steinbeck’s original handwritten draft of Of Mice and Men, which was eaten/destroyed by his dog Toby in 1936, has sold for $13,000, more than six times its estimate. In the same Bonhams auction, Steinbeck's wrought-iron sword which he presented to his sister Mary together with an investiture certificate, made $3,584.

John Steinbeck: The Mary Steinbeck Dekker Family Collection was a single-owner auction from the family of the author’s youngest sister which featured a treasure trove of letters, manuscripts, diaries, presentation copy novels, and personal ephemera. The sale saw multiple works by Steinbeck beat past previous auction world records including a first edition of In Dubious Battle which achieved more than nine times its estimate. The novel, inscribed to his niece and her husband, sold for $54,000 (in contrast to the penciled in price of $8.50 which Steinbeck thought was high at the time noting in his inscription: "what a price for a proletarian book").

The fragment of Of Mice and Men features pieces of the beginning of the dead mouse scene from the first chapter. On the verso, the scrap reads: "... bank the dead ... noise shattering an ... evening. The lambs ... from the rear." The Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University has a chewed-up fragment of Of Mice and Men found as part of Carol Steinbeck's donated scrapbooks. Bonhams was unable to locate any other fragments institutionally or in rare book hub.

Also achieving records were first edition, presentation copies of Tortilla Flat, sold for four times its estimate at $58,000, and The Pastures of Heaven, sold for three times its estimate at $32,000 – both of which were inscribed by Steinbeck to his sister Mary.