Of Rights and Men: Steinbeck's Kin Win Two-Year Court Battle

by Staff
6.13.06

The publishing and movie rights to John Steinbeck's early novels, previously held by Penguin and heirs of Steinbeck's widow Elaine, who died in 2003 at the age of 88, were recently awarded to the author's son and granddaughter by a federal judge in New York.

The novels, including The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, and Tortilla Flat, will become the property of Thomas Steinbeck and Blake Smyle.

When the author died in 1968, six years after he received the Nobel Prize, his will did not specify who should hold the copyrights of his works. His estate was originally bequeathed to his third wife Elaine in 1950.