A Promising Stab: Steinbeck’s Cup of Gold

Being a life of Henry Morgan, buccaneer, with occasional references to history, and a promising stab at a novel of adventure. Strangely enough, the tale lacks the color and spirit traditional to its genre, perhaps because the author has preferred to tinker with a realistic method—or maybe it was an oversight. Mr. Steinbeck lapses into pedestrian narrative at times, but even so, enough brave names and places are bandied about to hold the interest of most fans; and Mr. Steinbeck’s graceful manner lifts the yarn above the adventure groceries of this degenerate age. The tale tells of Henry’s boyhood in the Welsh glens, his sailing for the Indies at the age of fifteen, his slavery in Barbados and later triumphs on the Spanish Main, including the sack of Panama, the Cup of Gold, for love of the mysterious Ysobel, alias the Red Saint, and his respectable death years later as lieutenant governor of Jamaica.

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From New York Herald Tribune, August 18, 1929.