John Steinbeck

Born: 1902 | Died: 1968

John Ernst Steinbeck II was born in Salinas, near Monterey, California. His German emigrant father was a local politician and his mother a school teacher, but Steinbeck spent much time working as a manual laborer to support himself.

Many of his books and short stories deal with the struggle of the working class and the migrant worker during the Great Depression. His book The Grapes of Wrath about the migration of a dispossessed family from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to California, won a Pulitzer Prize and became a classic motion picture in 1940. Other famous books include his novella Of Mice and Men, East of Eden, and Cannery Row, all of which were also adapted to the big screen. He also wrote several screenplays for motion pictures, among them The Forgotten Village and Viva Zapata!

Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. He died six years later in New York.