John Steinbeck Biography

John Steinbeck was born February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California, Steinbeck dropped out of one of the most elite colleges and worked as a laborer before he became a successful and well known writer. He wrote immensely about the economic problems faced by the hard working and lower class during the Great Depression. He was also a very successful American writer, Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for literature and the Pulitzer Prize for his book, The Grapes of Wrath, which was written in 1939, that book and many more made John a very known writer. Steinbeck was born into a family where his mother was a teacher and his father had a vast assortment of jobs to support his family. His wife was an actress and she met John on a trip to California, …show more content…
Steinbeck was introduced to writing and reading at the age of nine when his aunt gave him a book for his birthday, this book became his favorite book (steinbeck). John began writing at the age of 14, he frequently locked himself in his bedroom to give himself privacy so that he could write(steinbeck)(biography). He enrolled in Stanford more for pleasing his parents rather for himself, he only took the classes he wanted to take, even though he did not get a degree that did not hurt him in his talent of writing(biography). Steinbeck also worked on farms, ranches and for a local sugar company, where he worked in an office and out in the field. John began writing his first novel, Cup of Gold in 1929 during his three year period of being a caretaker of an estate on Lake Tahoe …show more content…
John’s novel Cup of Gold, was not widely popular but he changed that when he published Pastures of Heaven, and To a God Unknown, these novels increased his popularity but did not increase his wealth. Until, Tortilla Flat, which was about the clash of two completely different cultures, the Paisano (combined, Spanish, Indians and Mexicans), and the traditional European culture, this book was Steinbeck’s best seller and made him wealthy and popular (enotes). John Ernest Steinbeck Jr., was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception" (nobelprize). Steinbeck had to live and work through one the of most difficult times in American History, The Great Depression. He also wrote novels about the consequences of it. Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, both talk about the Great Depression, and its effects, especially Grapes of Wrath, if talks about the social and economic impressions of the Depression, the book focuses on a poor family who are tenant farmers and their difficulties through this tough time. The novel Grapes of Wrath, became Steinbeck’s best selling book of 1939, this book led him to being awarded the Pulitzer Prize for