Years before becoming one of America’s most celebrated authors, John Steinbeck wrote at least three novels which were never published. Two of them w

John Steinbeck’s estate urged to let the world read his shunned werewolf novel

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2021-05-24 00:30:02

Years before becoming one of America’s most celebrated authors, John Steinbeck wrote at least three novels which were never published. Two of them were destroyed by the young writer as he struggled to make his name, but a third – a full-length mystery werewolf story entitled Murder at Full Moon – has survived unseen in an archive ever since being rejected for publication in 1930.

Now a British academic is calling for the Steinbeck estate to finally allow the publication of the work, written almost a decade before masterpieces such as The Grapes of Wrath, his epic about the Great Depression and the struggles of migrant farm workers.

“There would be a huge public interest in a totally unknown werewolf novel by one of the best-known, most read American writers of the 20th century,” said Professor Gavin Jones, a specialist in American literature at Stanford University.

The 233-page typescript has been stored in the vast archives of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin after Steinbeck’s unsuccessful attempt to have it published more than 90 years ago.