Of Mice and Men First Edition: How to Identify the 1937 Covici-Friede, and Is It Still on the GCSE?

An Of Mice and Men first edition is the Covici-Friede hardback published in New York in February 1937: beige cloth, a pictorial jacket priced $2.00, and on page 9 a sentence that ends with the odd word "pendula". That word, and a small bullet on page 88, mark the first issue, and they are the whole test. Steinbeck's short novel was a Book-of-the-Month Club choice before publication and was quickly reprinted, so 1937 copies are not rare in themselves; first issue copies in their jacket are.

The second question people ask about this book is whether it is still taught. It was for years the novel most English GCSE candidates studied, which is why so many copies sit on British shelves, and its removal in 2014 and again in Wales in 2024 made headlines. Both stories are below. We track the book on the Of Mice and Men page.

The one-minute check

Open the book to the title page and then to page 9.

1. Title page. It should read New York, Covici-Friede, with 1937 on the copyright page. Heinemann, the Modern Library or a later publisher means it is not the American first.
2. Page 9, lines 20 and 21. The first issue ends a sentence about Lennie with "and only moved because the heavy hands were pendula". Bauman, Raptis, Heritage and Freeman's Hindman all describe the line in these words; John Atkinson's listing spells it "pendular", but means the same passage.
3. Page 88. The page number has a small bullet between the two 8s. Bauman, Raptis and Heritage all record it.
4. The binding. Beige cloth stamped in black and terracotta on the front cover and spine, with the top edge stained blue. Not every first issue has the blue top edge: Christie's sold a copy without it in 2021 as a first issue because the text points were present, so treat the stain as a support, not a test.
5. The jacket. A pictorial jacket with $2.00 on the front flap, as Books Tell You Why and John Atkinson both describe it.

If page 9 and page 88 both pass, you have the first issue. Our guide to points of issue explains why dealers use text points like these, and dust jackets explained covers why the jacket carries so much of the price.

The first issue, the second issue and the book club

The awkward "pendula" sentence did not last. In the second issue page 9 was reset and the bullet on page 88 disappeared: Heritage describes a second issue copy with the page reset "with the exclusion of nine words" and the bullet gone, and the Morgan Library catalogues its second issue by the missing bullet. Books Tell You Why reports that a second printing followed only twenty days after the first, a figure we have not seen elsewhere.

How many first issue copies were printed is less certain than dealers make it sound. Books Tell You Why and Shapero both give 2,500 copies, and we have found no bibliography that contradicts them, but no primary record either. Christie's, Bauman and Bonhams cite Goldstone and Payne A7a for the first issue.

The Book-of-the-Month Club edition is the copy most often mistaken for a first. It was issued in 1937 in a similar cloth and the same jacket design, but the jacket has no price on the front flap, as both the First Edition Rare Books and an ABAA dealer note. The First Edition Rare Books adds that the club copy has "Printed and bound by the Haddon Craftsmen" on the copyright page, page 9 in its corrected form ending "hung loosely", and no bullet on page 88; we have seen those details in only that one listing. The First Edition Rare Books asks $150 for one in a very good jacket. Our book club edition checker and guide to book club editions cover the general signs.

	First issue	Second issue	Book club edition
Page 9	Ends "heavy hands were pendula"	Reset, nine words fewer (per Heritage)	Corrected text (per the First Edition Rare Books)
Page 88	Bullet between the 8s	No bullet	No bullet
Jacket flap	$2.00	$2.00	No price
Top edge	Usually stained blue	Not recorded	Not recorded

The other 1937 books

The first UK edition. Heinemann published the book in London in 1937. Dealers describe pale blue cloth (one says turquoise) lettered in gilt on the spine, pink endpapers and the Heinemann windmill blind-stamped on the back board, in a jacket decorated by Michael Rothenstein. Three dealers on AbeBooks record the price as 6s. on the front flap, and two of them, with Books Tell You Why, describe a scarce yellow wraparound band advertising the book's American success. UK dealers ask from about £650 to £850 for jacketed copies without the band, and one fine banded copy was listed at about £2,100. It is collected in its own right, but our guide to first editions versus first American editions explains why the American book is the true first here.

The play. Steinbeck wrote the novel to be staged almost as it stood. Covici-Friede published Of Mice and Men: A Play in Three Acts in 1937, in beige cloth with a blue top edge, as Bonhams describes its copy; Goldstone and Payne list it as A8a. The play opened on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre on 23 November 1937. A copy signed by the Broadway cast, with playbills from Steinbeck's own library, made $2,816 at Bonhams New York in October 2023, and Raptis has offered a first edition of the play in its $2.00 jacket at $1,400.

The Modern Library. The first Modern Library edition carries an introduction by Joseph Henry Jackson. Library catalogues date it either 1937 or 1938, and we have not found a source that settles which. It is a reprint, not a first.

What first editions have sold for

These are auction results, each with its source, converted at roughly $1.30 to the pound. They are not a valuation of any copy. Sotheby's and PBA Galleries results were not found online for this title, so they are not included, and Swann's October 2023 sale of a first issue inscribed to Harold Ross of the New Yorker (lot 210, estimate $3,500 to $5,000) has no published result that we could find.

Date	Sale	Copy	Price
December 2025	Heritage Auctions, lot 45258	First issue, inscribed to Steinbeck's sister and brother-in-law	$23,125 (about £17,800)
September 2021	Christie's New York, Theodore B. Baum collection, lot 377	First issue in jacket, without the blue top edge, estimate $700 to $1,200	$15,000 (about £11,500)
July 2024	Heritage Auctions, lot 42042	Second issue, signed presentation copy	$8,125 (about £6,250)
September 2023	Christie's London, Charlie Watts collection, lot 407 (reported by VeryImportantLot)	First issue, inscribed in 1937, estimate £1,000 to £1,500	£4,788 (about $6,200)
June 2024	Freeman's Hindman, McKenzie collection, lot 239	First issue in jacket, inscribed to Alan J. Blau	$4,445 (about £3,400)
May 2022	Freeman's, Jack Charles Davis library, lot 295	First issue in unrestored jacket, estimate $400 to $600	$3,125 (about £2,400)
February 2013	Bonhams Los Angeles, lot 6246	First issue, signed presentation copy, jacket chipped	$3,125 (about £2,400)

Note how often the estimates were beaten. Dealers ask from about $4,200 (Raptis, fine in a near fine jacket) to £5,000 (John Atkinson) for unsigned first issues, and Books Tell You Why puts the range at a couple of thousand dollars up to about $25,000 depending on condition. Our guide to book condition grading explains the terms.

Is Of Mice and Men still on the GCSE?

England. No. In March 2011 Michael Gove, then Education Secretary, cited a departmental survey suggesting that "over 90% of schools" taught the book at GCSE, as the BBC reported, and used it as an example of how narrow GCSE reading had become. In May 2014, as the exam boards prepared new English Literature GCSEs for first teaching in September 2015, OCR's head of GCSE reform, Paul Dodd, was quoted saying the book "will not be included" and that it had been studied by 90 per cent of teenagers taking the subject; Channel 4 and Fox News both reported it, following the Sunday Times. The new rules required post-1914 prose or drama from the British Isles, which left no compulsory slot for Steinbeck. Gove denied banning anything, and the Department for Education said it had not banned American literature. The effect was the same: none of the English boards' reformed lists, including the AQA set texts, carries it.

Wales. WJEC, the main Welsh board, left the book out of its new GCSE English Language and Literature, taught from September 2025, citing concern about its racial language, as the Irish News (carrying a Press Association report) and LBC reported on 23 December 2024. To Kill a Mockingbird went at the same time.

Ireland. Still set. Circular 0051/2024 lists it among the prescribed novels for the Junior Cycle cohort sitting the exam in 2027, and Circular 0038/2025 keeps it for 2028 to 2030.

United States. Teachers still assign it heavily: it is fourth on Vocabulary.com's ranking of the books most assigned by high school teachers in 2025, behind The Great Gatsby, Romeo and Juliet and The Crucible. Texas is a different story. The State Board of Education's January 2026 draft of its required reading list (19 TAC 110.70) named Of Mice and Men as an English III anchor work, but it is not in the revised May 2026 draft or in the English III list as adopted and published in the Texas Register on 28 August 2026, which takes effect from the 2033 to 2034 school year.

Pitfalls

• A $2.00 jacket on a later issue. Jackets move between copies. Check page 9 before the flap.
• The play sold as the novel. The bindings look alike; the title page says "A Play in Three Acts".
• A first UK edition sold as "the first edition". Heinemann followed Covici-Friede.

Check your copy

Open the Of Mice and Men page and answer the points listed there for your copy; the page tells you whether it matches the first issue. Record what you own and we will tell you when new sales for your printing are added.