The Long Valley


The Long Valley is a collection of short fiction by John Steinbeck. Most of the stories appeared originally in literary periodicals, and were first collected by Viking Press in 1938.
Ranked among Steinbeck's "finest and best-known" fiction, these are among the most frequently anthologized of Steinbeck's stories, widely read by university undergraduates and high school students.
Author and social critic Andre Gide declared that several stories in The Long Valley "equaled or surpassed" those of Russian author Anton Chekhov.
"The Murder" and "The Promise" were selected for the O. Henry Prize anthology for short fiction in 1934 and 1938, respectively.

Stories

The literary periodical in which a story first appeared is indicated below.
  • "The Chrysanthemums"
  • "The White Quail"
  • "Flight"
  • "The Snake"
  • "Breakfast"
  • "The Raid"
  • "The Harness"
  • "The Vigilante"
  • "Johnny Bear"
  • "The Murder"
  • "St. Katy the Virgin"
  • The Red Pony
  • *"The Gift"
  • *"The Great Mountains"
  • *"The Promise"
  • "The Leader of the People"

    Publication history

The stories in the collections were written, with the exception of "St. Katy the Virgin," between the spring of 1933 and summer of 1934. All of them, except "Flight," appeared in literary journals previous to being collected in The Long Valley.
Covici-Friede, which had published Steinbeck's successful novellas Tortilla Flat and Of Mice and Men, was facing bankruptcy in 1937. At their request, Steinbeck attempted to quickly assemble the stories that would comprise The Long Valley. Covici-Friede issued a limited edition of three works: "The Gift," "The Great Mountain," and "The Promise" entitled The Red Pony shortly before going out of business in July 1938. Pascal Covici moved to Viking Press as senior editor, where The Long Valley was published in September, 1938.

Setting

The "long" valley of the title refers to the Salinas Valley of California. Of the 15 stories that comprise the volume, perhaps five or six can be positively identified with this valley. The other tales take place in several regions of California: "Flight" on the Pacific Coast north of Big Sur, "The Snake" on Cannery Row in Monterey, and "The Murder" in the Corral de Tierra. Biographer Richard S. Hughes places "Breakfast" in the San Joaquin or Sacramento valleys and "The Raid" and "The Vigilante" occur in unidentified "outlying small towns.". "The Red Pony" trilogy takes place near the Santa Lucia Mountains, 100 miles south of Salinas. "Saint Katy the Virgin," geographically and temporally remote, is set in 14th century Europe.

Reception

Critic Stanley Young in The New York Times Book Review offered this measured praise for The Long Valley:
Literary critic Ralph Thompson]in "Books of the Times" review of September 21, 1938 registers a number of complaints concerning the volume:
Writing in the New Statesman critic John Mair notes a "directness of feeling and expression that is coming to be regarded as distinctively American" in this collection. He adds: "Mr. Steinbeck is not a great writer—he has too little passion for that, and his mind seems too observant to be really creative—but in his own way he is as perfect a craftsman as Hemingway and his disciples."