John Steinbeck's Webster's Dictionary and Roget's Thesaurus: Rare Books of the Week

John Steinbeck's Webster's Dictionary
John Steinbeck's personal copies of Webster's Dictionary and of Roget's Thesaurus come to auction this week at Christie's in its online Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts including Americana sale ending January 28.
Steinbeck bought them in 1927 when he travelled to New York City with the intention of becoming a writer. Both are signed "John Steinbeck" and dated 1927 on the front endpapers, and custom-bound, both covered with plain suede, and printed on thin paper with thumb indices.
They last appeared at auction in 1998 at PBA Galleries and were bought at that sale by the current owner.
Steinbeck's books are in good company - also going under the online hammer at the same auction are an inscribed first edition of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, the first edition in English of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's A Treatise on the Social Compact and portions of a Godfather script from Marlon Brando, with his edits.