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 of the book were as poor as the reviews of the stage production. While some critics acknowledged it for the experiment that Steinbeck had intended, it was seen as peculiar and at best moderately effective. The artificial use of language, while necessary to allow the characters' development on the stage, jarred with the critics reviewing the novelization, as did Steinbeck's overemphasis of the message of the play. 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