The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has awarded the publishing rights to ten early works by John Steinbeck to the late author’s son and granddaughter, including The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, and The Red Pony, among others. The fight over the copyrights was essentially a family dispute among Steinbeck’s heirs, according to the NYT account, but the Associated Press elaborates on how the decision affects Penguin Group. I’d been curious, in looking through recent Penguin catalogs, why Steinbeck seemed to be getting the fast-track treatment where converting all the light-green “20th Century Classics” into the new streamlined black “Penguin Classics” format was concerned; I guess this answers that!
At any rate, Penguin’s official line is that it’ll be years before any of this becomes an issue, and that’s if the decision holds up. For their part, Thomas Steinbeck and Blake Smyle say, through their attorney, they “[want] to protect and preserve the Steinbeck legacy… [and plan] to renegotiate contracts to publish the works with Penguin or other publishers.”