Steinbeck became a celebrity with the publication of Of Mice and Men in 1937. The novel was well received both critically and popularly. Chosen as a Book-of-the-Month-Club selection, Of Mice and Men soon became a national bestseller. Steinbeck returned to New York in triumph and toured Europe. He eventually settled in the fashionable East Coast writers' colony of Buck's County, where he worked on the script of the play version of the novel with the famous playwright, George Kaufman. The play opened in late November 1937 to rave reviews, received the New York Drama Critic Circle's Award for Best Play, and enjoyed a long, successful run before being made into a theatrical film. Even Steinbeck's good fortune, however, could not save his publishing house from ruin. Pascal Covici would leave the financially defunct firm of Covici, Friede to become the executive editor of Viking Press, and Steinbeck would follow. In 1938, Viking published The Long Valley, a collection of Steinbeck's short stories.
Although enjoying huge success both financially and critically, Steinbeck remained a man of the people. He refused an offer from Life magazine to write about the migrant workers because he felt it would be wrong to make money off their misfortune. He continued to base his writing on actual experiences, living and working among the very folks he would use as material for his work. In fact, on the night that Of Mice and Men opened on Broadway, he was in a squatters camp with a group of migrants with whom he had traveled from Oklahoma.
