Waterfront Long Island Home Where Noted Author Wrote Last Novel Lists At $18M, Report Says

Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck’s Long Island estate, where he notably penned his final novel, “The Winter of Discontent,” has hit the market for nearly $18 million.

John Steinbeck's former Long Island property has been listed for nearly $18 million.
Photo Credit: *Gavin Zeigler for Sotheby’s International Realty*

Zak Failla

02/28/2021 10:00 a.m.

Steinbeck’s waterfront home in the Hamptons has been listed for $17.9 million, which would be the first time the property was put up for sale in more than six decades.

The 1.8-acre property includes nearly 600 feet of private waterfront and a 60-foot pier with views of Morris Cove and Upper Sag Harbor Cove. It is being sold through a private trust that was established by Steinbeck’s late wife Elaine.

“The year was 1952 and the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, John Steinbeck, had just completed the highly acclaimed 'East of Eden,’ the listing states. “A few years later, John and Elaine came to Sag Harbor and fell in love with a sundrenched cottage, tucked away in the trees on a bluff.

“His newly found 'Eden' was his latest in a line of treasured habitats that inspired him to say: 'I look forward to Sag Harbor - after seeing you, of course.”

According to the listing, the main cottage includes two bedrooms and two bathrooms complete with bookcase-lined walls and a fireplace. The estate also includes a guest cottage with waterfront views, and a small space that the “Grapes of Wrath” author used as a writing space while in New York.

The home was first purchased by the acclaimed author in 1955, where he spent most of his time before his death in 1968. It is reportedly the starting point of the road trip documented in “Travels With Charley: In Search of America,” and he wrote “The Winter of Discontent,” which is set in a fictitious Long Island town, while living there in 1961.

In “Travels with Charley,” a book about a road trip with his beloved dog - who has a portrait over the Sag Harbor home’s fireplace - Steinbeck referred to the property as “my little fishing place.”

 “Typically you don’t get a pier and you don’t get water,” Doreen Atkins of Sotheby’s International Realty said in the New York Times, noting also that the property was “private and protected,” in large part because of its downward slope. “It has historical value because Steinbeck owned it. He was a presence in the village.”

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