Saving Steinbeck's Idyll by the Sea

There are very few places in America that can boast of having been home to a Nobel Prize winner — but here on the East End, we have just such a place.

Sag Harbor was where author John Steinbeck opted to live out his final years, in a little cottage with a separate writing studio, situated on a picturesque peninsula jutting out into the cove at the end of Bluff Point Road. The 1.3-acre property has a starring role in the early pages of Steinbeck’s book “Travels with Charley,” which describes how the author ventures out into the rough waters of Morris Cove to secure his little boat as Hurricane Donna roared into town in 1960. Sag Harbor is also where he wrote his last novel, “The Winter of Our Discontent,” and where he learned that he had won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.

Steinbeck died in 1968, and since the death of his widow, Elaine, in 2003, the home has remained in her family. But in 2021, when it was put on the market for $17.9 million, an effort to preserve the property as a nonprofit writer’s retreat soon came into focus.

Spearheaded by Canio’s Books owner Kathryn Szoka, the effort was soon adopted by the Sag Partnership, and though raising the funds necessary to buy the property initially appeared to be a Herculean effort, thanks to a reduction in the initial asking price and a commitment from Southampton Town to close the gap with money from the Community Preservation Fund, what once seemed to be only a dream is inching nearer to reality.

This past week, the Sag Harbor Partnership announced that it’s close to signing a negotiated contract for the property and is looking to raise just $180,000 more to meet its goal for the project. Then, on January 24, Southampton Town will hold a special public hearing on the proposal for the Steinbeck Writer’s Retreat, which would be operated by the University of Texas, Elaine Steinbeck’s alma mater and home to some of Steinbeck’s papers.

This is great news indeed and we couldn’t be happier to start off 2023 this way. We are hopeful and eager to see this project come to fruition and truly buoyed by the idea that such an important piece of literary history might soon be preserved for the benefit of us all.