John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck was born in 1902 in Salinas, California, in a farming valley that became the setting of much of his fiction. He attended Stanford University on and off without taking a degree, working at times as a farm laborer and on ranches. After several unsuccessful books, he had his first success with Tortilla Flat (1935), about friends living in Monterey. Of Mice and Men (1937) tells of two migrant ranch workers, George and Lennie, who dream of owning a small farm. The Grapes of Wrath (1939), about the Joad family, who leave the Oklahoma Dust Bowl for California during the Great Depression, won the Pulitzer Prize and caused great controversy. Steinbeck was close friends with the marine biologist Ed Ricketts, with whom he collected sea life in the Gulf of California; Ricketts inspired the character Doc in Cannery Row (1945). East of Eden (1952) retells the story of Cain and Abel in the Salinas Valley. Steinbeck also worked as a war correspondent. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962 and died in New York City in 1968.

John Steinbeck is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Raised in the Episcopal Church; he later became an agnostic. Source: Wikipedia