Burning Bright in 1942, but, of the three, "Burning Bright" was the most complete attempt at the form. Steinbeck believed that he may have been the first person to attempt the style. At the time of writing the introduction, in which he explained his intentions, he believed it was a form that would bear further experimentation. In a continuation of the experiment, a stage production was planned to open at the same time the book was published. The original title of the book, "In the Forests of the Night", was a line from "The Tyger" by William Blake, but complaints that it
Burning Bright Burning Bright Burning Bright is a 1950 novella by John Steinbeck written as an experiment with producing a play in novel format. Rather than providing only the dialogue and brief stage directions as would be expected in a play, Steinbeck fleshes out the scenes with details of both the characters and the environment. The intention was to allow the play to be read by the non-theatrical reader while still allowing the dialogue to be lifted and performed with little adaptation by acting companies. While Steinbeck could see that providing little information in the way of physical description or stage direction