Steinbeck, John (Ernst)

(born Feb. 27, 1902, Salinas, Calif., U.S.—died Dec. 20, 1968, New York, N.Y.) U.S. novelist. Steinbeck intermittently attended Stanford University and worked as a manual labourer before his books attained success. He spent much of his life in Monterey county, Calif. His reputation rests mostly on the naturalistic novels on proletarian themes that he wrote in the 1930s. Among them are Tortilla Flat (1935), In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), and the acclaimed The Grapes of Wrath (1939, Pulitzer Prize), which aroused widespread sympathy for the plight of migratory farm workers. In World War II he served as a war correspondent. His later novels include Cannery Row (1945), The Pearl (1947), The Wayward Bus (1947), and East of Eden (1952). He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica