For 50 years, the old box of documents collected dust in the West Hollywood garage of Twyla Martin. She knew it had something to do with author John Steinbeck, with whom Martin’s husband worked briefly in the 1950s.
But not until after she was widowed in 1995 did Martin finally peek inside the box.
What she found, literary experts say, was a treasure-trove of the Nobel laureate’s effects, including the missing first draft of the novel “Sweet Thursday,” the lighthearted sequel to Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row.”
On Thursday the archive — divided into two lots — was auctioned off at a rare book gallery here and was expected to fetch as much as $500,000. But the presumed bidding war between collectors and institutions failed to materialize.
A manuscript of the Steinbeck work “The Log From the Sea of Cortez” sold for $80,000, but the rest went unclaimed.
Whatever its monetary value, Steinbeck experts said the discovery has literary significance.
“It’s a gem,” said Mimi Gladstein, president of the John Steinbeck Society of America, who teaches courses on the author at the University of Texas, El Paso.
