John Steinbeck

An American author and winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize for literature, John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr., was born in Salinas, Calif., on February 27, 1902. He died on Dec. 20th, 1968. He based most of his novels on the American experience, often with sympathetic focus on the poor, the eccentric, or the dispossessed.
Early Life and Works
Steinbeck grew up in Salinas Valley, a rich agricultural area of Monterey County and the setting of many of his works, where he learned firsthand of the difficulties of farm laborers. From 1919 to 1925 he studied intermittently at Stanford University but did not receive a degree.
Steinbeck's first published book, Cup of Gold (1929), was not successful. He then turned to the valleys of rural California for his settings and characters. The Pastures of Heaven (1932) contains a series of closely linked tales about residents of California. To a God Unknown (1933) relates a mystical story of self-sacrifice and is one of Steinbeck's strongest statements about the relationship between people and the land. The Long Valley (1938) is a collection of short stories, among them "The Red Pony," which chronicles the initiation of a ranch boy, Jody Tiflin, into manhood.
Artistic Success
Steinbeck's first popular success was Tortilla Flat (1935), an episodic tale that recounts semihumorously the adventures of a raffish band of Mexican-Americans. The books that ensued were terse and grim. In Dubious Battle (1936) is the tragic story of a young labor organizer during an apple pickers' strike. OF MICE AND MEN (1937) depicts the lives of two itinerant farm workers and the tragedy that comes when their dreams are shattered. Written as a "play-novel," it was produced on Broadway in 1937 and filmed in 1939. Their Blood Is Strong (1938) is a nonfictional account of conditions in migrant agricultural workers' camps derived largely from articles written for the San Francisco News. It probably formed the basis for The GRAPES OF WRATH