John Steinbeck Biography

John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California, of German and Irish ancestry, his mother a schoolteacher who encouraged his love of reading.

After youthful employment as a hired hand across local ranches, he enrolled at Stanford University. However, he always worked alongside studying, and, after erratic attendance, he left to become a freelance writer in New York in 1925.

He tried for a few years to establish himself, but he failed and returned to California in 1928 where he took up work as a tour guide and caretaker at a fish hatchery where he met his first wife Carol Henning.

They wed in January 1930 and during the great depression they lived in a cottage owned by Steinbeck's father. His family gave him free housing, free paper and from 1928 loans that enabled him to give up a warehouse job in San Francisco and focus on his writing.

His first novels – 'Cup of Gold', 'The Pastures of Heaven' and 'To a God Unknown' – were not well received.

Steinbeck's first real success came with 'Tortilla Flat', in 1935. An earthy, humorous sketch of Monterey paisanos life, it won the California Commonwealth Club's Gold Medal, for best Californian novel.

Steinbeck's writing relied upon exhaustive personal research, and his novels primarily confronted the problems of the rural economy and labour force.

As his career progressed, his work grew more serious and powerful in its social criticism. In 'Dubious Battle', the stories of 'The Long Valley' and especially 'Of Mice and Men'(1937), he carved out a distinctive moral and social voice.

In 1939 he completed 'The Grapes of Wrath', which many consider his masterpiece. The story of Tom Joad, the Oklahoma tenant farmer who migrates to California in search of work, became legendary, and won him the Pulitzer Prize.

Steinbeck went on a voyage across the gulf of California with his friend Ed Ricketts and his wife Carol in 1940 to collect specimens that were later described in 'The Log from the Sea of Cortez', which was published in 1951.

His first marriage ended in 1941 and when the divorce was finalised in 1942, Steinbeck married Gwendolyn Conger with whom he had his only children. Thomas was born in 1944 and John was born in 1946.

During the Second World War, Steinbeck was a war correspondent on the New York Herald Tribune.In 1944, he returned home to the US after being wounded in a munitions explosion in North Africa.

In 1947, Steinbeck made the first of many trips to the Soviet Union and with photographer Robert Capa, became one of the first westerners to visit Moscow, Kiev and Stalingrad since the Communist Revolution. On his return, he published his experiences in the 1948 book 'A Russian Journal' and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Later that year, he travelled to California to say farewell to his friend Ricketts who had been fatally injured when his car had hit a train. Steinbeck was too late as Ricketts died before he arrived. On his return home, his wife asked for a divorce leading to Steinbeck becoming depressed for the next year.

In December 1950, Steinbeck married his third and final wife, stage manager Elaine Scott, who was buried next to her husband when she died in 2004.

His later works included 'East of Eden' (1952), 'The Winter of Our Discontent' (1961) and the sociological travelogues of 'Travels with Charley' (1962), the latter a product of an extensive three-month truck tour through forty American states.

The Salinas Valley, which had a rich history of migrant workers, was to prove vital to Steinbeck's later writings, anchoring them in a place that acted as a bellwether of American culture in the 1930s Dust Bowl.

His writing was also flecked with a left political bent thanks to Steinbeck's affiliations with members of the League of American Writers and radical authors such as Lincoln Steffens and his wife.

His literature has inspired many people since its publication at the beginning of the 20th century. Notable references include award-winning adaptations for film, including Elia Kazan's 'East of Eden', one of the only three films to star James Dean in a starring role.

Kazan also worked with Steinbeck on the author's last written work, the screenplay for the 1975 film 'Viva Zapata!'

Bruce Springsteen, who is also known for his leftist politics, wrote a song called 'The Ghost of Tom Joad' after the main character in 'The Grapes of Wrath' in homage to Steinbeck.

Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, and died in New York City on 20 December 1968 from heart disease.