John Steinbeck Biography

John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr., was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California. His father John Ernst Steinbeck had settled in California after the Civil War. His mother Olive Hamilton Steinbeck was a public school teacher. Steinbeck grew up in the beautiful, fertile Salinas Valley, and most of his literary works are set in the background of California. He worked as a hired hand during his teenage years, which provided him with a deeper understanding of rural California.

In 1919, at the age of 17, Steinbeck enrolled at Stanford University, but after attending university for a few intermittent years, he left without obtaining a degree. He worked as a reporter for the next five years after which he became a caretaker for a Lake Tahoe estate. It is here where he completed his first novel, Cup of Gold, which was published in 1929, two months before the stock market crash. He, however, achieved critical and commercial success six years later when Tortilla Flat was published in 1935.

In 1930, Steinbeck married Carol Henning whom he had met at Lake Tahoe. The couple moved to Los Angeles, where Steinbeck continued his writing with Carol editing his works. The decade of the Great Depression greatly influenced Steinbeck. His best-known works focus on the plight of desperately poor California wanderers, who, despite suffering harsh realities, emerge spiritually triumphant in the end. Steinbeck’s works have always been politically involved. He followed Tortilla Flat with three novels about the plight of the California laboring class, beginning with In Dubious Battle in 1936 and Of Mice and Men in 1937. The Grapes of Wrath won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and became Steinbeck’s most famous novel.

Steinbeck and Carol divorced in 1942. His marriage with his second wife, Gwyndolyn Conger, led to two sons—Thomas Myles Steinbeck and John Steinbeck IV. This marriage too ended in divorce in 1948. A year later, he met Elaine Scott, a stage manager, with whom he started a romantic relationship. They got married in 1950. The marriage between Steinbeck and Scott lasted for the remaining years of his life.

Steinbeck had meanwhile continued writing throughout World War II. Using his journalistic experience, he became a war correspondent. He went to Europe during the war. Later, he worked in Hollywood both as a filmmaker and a scriptwriter. His important later works include East of Eden (1952) and Travels with Charley (1962). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1962. Steinbeck died in New York City in 1968.

Critical appreciation of Steinbeck’s works has always been mixed. He explored the themes of manhood and male relationships (as evident in Of Mice and Men) and was strongly influenced by his contemporary Ernest Hemingway. While he was acknowledged as a great writer in the 1940s and 1950s, there is a strong argument about his work being sentimental, overly moralistic, and superficial.