John Steinbeck

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Lore & Background

Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California, of German, English, and Irish descent. His paternal grandfather, Johann Adolf Großsteinbeck, arrived in the United States in 1858, shortening the family name from Großsteinbeck. His father served as Monterey County treasurer; his mother, Olive Hamilton, was a schoolteacher. Steinbeck grew up in a small rural valley about 25 miles from the Pacific Coast, spending summers on nearby ranches and later working with migrant workers on Spreckels sugar beet farms. He graduated from Salinas High School in 1919 and studied English literature at Stanford University, leaving without a degree in 1925. After a failed attempt to write in New York City, he returned to California and worked as a tour guide and caretaker at Lake Tahoe, where he met Carol Henning, his first wife. They married in January 1930 in Los Angeles. When their money ran out six months later, they moved to a cottage owned by his father in Pacific Grove. During the Great Depression, Steinbeck bought a small boat and claimed he lived on fish and crabs from the sea and fresh vegetables from his garden; when those sources failed, he and his wife accepted welfare and on rare occasions stole bacon from the local produce market. In 1930, Steinbeck met marine biologist Ed Ricketts, who became a close friend and mentor, teaching him about philosophy and biology. Ricketts operated a biological lab on the coast of Monterey, and Steinbeck's wife worked there as secretary-bookkeeper. Steinbeck helped on an informal basis and learned Ricketts's ecological philosophy.

Reader's Guide

Steinbeck's first novel, Cup of Gold, was published in 1929. He achieved his first critical success with Tortilla Flat in 1935, which won the California Commonwealth Club's gold medal. He then wrote a series of "California novels" and Dust Bowl fiction, including In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath. Of Mice and Men, published in 1937, was a novella about two migrant agricultural laborers; Steinbeck wrote it with a stage play in mind, and the stage production was a hit. The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939, is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon; by its 75th anniversary, it had sold 14 million copies. It won the National Book Award in February 1940 and later that year the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The novel was adapted as a film directed by John Ford, starring Henry Fonda as Tom Joad. Steinbeck's work often employs settings in his native central California, particularly the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region, and explores themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists. He authored 33 books, including 16 novels, 6 non-fiction books, and 2 collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row, the multigeneration epic East of Eden, and the novellas The Red Pony and Of Mice and Men.

Did You Know?

• Steinbeck's paternal grandfather, Johann Adolf Großsteinbeck, was a founder of Mount Hope, a short-lived farming colony in Palestine that disbanded after Arab attackers killed his brother and raped his brother's wife and mother-in-law.
• In 1930, Steinbeck wrote a werewolf murder mystery, Murder at Full Moon, that has never been published because he considered it unworthy of publication.
• During the Great Depression, Steinbeck and his wife sometimes stole bacon from the local produce market to survive.
• The Grapes of Wrath was banned from Kern County's public schools and libraries in August 1939, a ban that lasted until January 1941.
• Steinbeck refused to travel from his home in California to attend any performance of the stage production of Of Mice and Men during its New York run, telling director George S. Kaufman that the play as it existed in his own mind was 'perfect.'

A Prolific Body of Work and Its Highest Honors

Steinbeck produced thirty-three books over the course of his career, a body that encompassed sixteen novels, six works of non-fiction, two collections of short stories, and one volume coauthored with his friend Edward Ricketts. Among the titles that defined his reputation were the lighthearted comic novels Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row, the sweeping multigenerational saga East of Eden, and two beloved novellas, The Red Pony and Of Mice and Men. His 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath earned the Pulitzer Prize and is widely regarded as his masterwork, a text that has entered the American literary canon. By the time the book's seventy-fifth anniversary arrived, it had moved fourteen million copies. In 1962 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the citation praising writings that blended sympathetic humor with sharp social observation. Critics and readers alike have since labeled him a giant of American letters, and he remains one of the most widely read authors of the entire twentieth century.

The Valley That Shaped a Writer

Born in Salinas, California, in 1902 to a family of German, English, and Irish stock, Steinbeck grew up in a small rural valley roughly twenty-five miles from the Pacific. His father served as Monterey County treasurer, while his mother, a former schoolteacher, shared his love of literature. The family's roots stretched further back: his paternal grandfather had founded a short-lived farming colony in Palestine before emigrating to the United States in 1858 and shortening the family surname. As a young man, Steinbeck spent summers laboring on nearby ranches, including the Post Ranch in Big Sur, and later worked alongside migrant laborers on Spreckels sugar beet farms. It was in that grueling fieldwork that he absorbed the harsh realities of migrant existence and the darker currents of human nature, experiences that would later fuel Of Mice and Men. He also found pockets of quiet in the Spreckels laboratory, where he could write between tasks, and he possessed a natural mechanical knack for repairing his own possessions.

Friendships, Marriage, and Creative Symbiosis

In 1928, while working as a tour guide and caretaker at Lake Tahoe, Steinbeck met Carol Henning; the two married in Los Angeles the following January. Their early entrepreneurial attempt—manufacturing plaster mannequins—collapsed within six months, and the couple retreated to a cottage on the Monterey Peninsula that belonged to Steinbeck's father. The elder Steinbecks provided free housing, manuscript paper, and small loans that freed John to write without the pressure of steady employment. During the Depression years the couple survived on fish, crabs, garden vegetables, and, on occasion, welfare or a stolen slab of bacon, sharing whatever they had with friends. Carol would later become the model for Mary Talbot in Cannery Row. In 1930 Steinbeck also met marine biologist Ed Ricketts, who operated a small biological lab on the Monterey coast. Over the next several years Ricketts became a close mentor, teaching Steinbeck ecology and philosophy, playing music to soothe his emotional storms, and forming a partnership that would eventually produce a coauthored book.

Themes of Injustice and a Lasting Cultural Footprint

Nearly all of Steinbeck's fiction is anchored in the landscapes of his native central California—the Salinas Valley, the Coast Ranges, the Monterey coastline—and through those settings he returned again and again to questions of fate, social injustice, and the dignity of ordinary, downtrodden people. His protagonists are rarely heroes in the traditional sense; they are everymen pushed to the margins by economic forces beyond their control. Beyond the page, Steinbeck served as an independent journalist and war correspondent during both World War II and the Vietnam War, carrying his keen social perception into the reporting trenches. The breadth of his influence is difficult to overstate: his works are taught in schools worldwide, his 1939 masterpiece has sold fourteen million copies, and the Nobel committee in 1962 recognized a body of writing that married imaginative storytelling with an unflinching eye for social truth. He is remembered, in the words of many literary historians, as a true giant of American letters.