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Classic Author: John Steinbeck

© Susan Jensen

John Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California. He became the third of four children–and the only son–of John Ernst II and Olive Hamilton Steinbeck. His father worked as the County Treasurer and his mother was a former schoolteacher. John grew up in the Salinas Valley, taking up his early studies at Salinas High School.

At 17 years old, John entered Stanford University intending to study English. He attended classes sporadically, and finally left college without a degree in 1925. John dropped out of school to concentrate on his writing career; he moved from California to New York in an attempt to publish some of his work. Unable to find a publisher, John worked as a construction worker and briefly at New York American.

In 1926, John returned to California, where he worked as a caretaker for a summer home at Lake Tahoe. Three years later, he published his first novel, Cup of Gold(1929). Over the next four years, he married Carol Henning and wrote two more books. Although he now had three books on the market, John had yet to receive any attention or critical acclaim. That would all change, however, with the publication of Tortilla Flat(1935), his first successful novel. Only two years later, he published the play/novelette Of Mice and Men(1937). He continued to write, and in 1939, he published his most famous novel of all, The Grapes of Wrath(1939).

The next year, the film versions of both Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath were released. Also in 1940, John Steinbeck received the National book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Grapes of Wrath.

In 1941, John separated from Carol and moved to New York City with singer Gwyndolyn Conger, whom he married on March 29, 1943 and divorced in 1948. Gwyndolyn bore John two children. In the same year, John worked in Europe and North Africa as a war correspondent for New York Herald Tribune. His dispatches were later gathered into a book, Once There Was a War(1958).

The work John Steinbeck published in the post-war years mostly pales in comparison to the books he wrote during the war years. Several important books did come out of this era, however, including The Pearl(1947), Burning Bright(1950) and East of Eden(1952). In 1948, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 1964, he was presented with the United States Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

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