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May 29, 2024 · John Steinbeck, American novelist, best known for The Grapes of Wrath (1939), which summed up the bitterness of the Great Depression decade and aroused widespread sympathy for the plight of migratory farmworkers. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.
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John Steinbeck, (born Feb. 27, 1902, Salinas, Calif.,...
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John Cheever (born May 27, 1912, Quincy, Massachusetts,...
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Along with The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and The Pearl, Of Mice and Men is one of Steinbeck's best known works. It was made into movies three times: in 1939 , starring Burgess Meredith , Lon Chaney Jr. , and Betty Field ; in 1981, starring Randy Quaid , Robert Blake and Ted Neeley ; and in 1992 , starring Gary Sinise and John Malkovich .
Apr 2, 2014 · Best Known For: John Steinbeck was an American novelist who is known for works such as the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, 'The Grapes of Wrath,' as well as 'Of Mice and Men' and 'East of...
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- East of Eden (1952) This 1952 novel is a book of Biblical scope and intensity. In telling the multi-generational stories of the Hamilton and Trask families, Steinbeck also tells the story of the Salinas valley, observed from afar as it changes with the passage of time.
- The Grapes of Wrath (1939) Set during the Great Depression, this classic historical fiction novel has a tumultuous past: banned from a number of schools and libraries when first published, it went on to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and sell more than 15 million copies.
- The Winter of Our Discontent (1961) The Winter of Our Discontent was Steinbeck’s final novel. It takes place in a small East Coast town, where Ethan Allen Hawley must come to terms with his personal failings, as well as the moral cost inherent in ‘rising’ in the world.
- Of Mice and Men (1937) Another of Steinbeck’s popular works regularly taught in schools, this heartbreaking novella takes us back to California in the years of the Great Depression.
- California’s Salinas Valley greatly influenced John Steinbeck’s work. Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California, and he used the region as the setting for many of his books, including the short story collection The Long Valley.
- He had a happy childhood.** Steinbeck grew up in a family of “modest means,” according to the Steinbeck House website, and was the third of four children (he had two older sisters as well as a younger one).
- Steinbeck likely wrote his first novel while working as a caretaker in Lake Tahoe. After dropping out of Stanford University, Steinbeck worked as a caretaker at the luxe Cascade Estates on the California side of Lake Tahoe near Mount Tallac.
- Steinbeck wrote (but never finished) a book based on King Arthur. As a child, Steinbeck was enthralled with Arthurian tales of knighthood, adventure, and honor—and as he began producing his own work, like 1935’s Tortilla Flat, he borrowed many of the plots and themes that defined Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (or The Death of Arthur).
After publishing some novels and short stories, Steinbeck first became widely known with Tortilla Flat (1935), a series of humorous stories about Monterey paisanos. Steinbeck’s novels can all be classified as social novels dealing with the economic problems of rural labour, but there is also a streak of worship of the soil in his books, which ...
During the decade of the 1930s Steinbeck wrote most of his best California fiction: The Pastures of Heaven (1932), To a God Unknown (1933), The Long Valley (1938), Tortilla Flat (1935), In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937) and The Grapes of Wrath (1939).
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