John Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, to a middle-class family in Salinas, California. His father, John Ernst, Sr., was a miller and local politician, and his mother, Olivia Hamilton, taught school. John Steinbeck was an American author who graduates from Salinas High School and enrolled at Stanford University but he left without a degree and traveled to New York City to start his life as a writer and then returned to California and settled there at Lake Tahoe. He then published his 1st book after a while, the great Depression occured, and then later he married Carol Henning (1st wife). 5 years later, the Dust Bowl occurred leading crops to die. John Steinbeck wrote another book called Tortilla Flat, it was Steinbeck’s first real critical and commercial success, earning him his first California Commonwealth Club medal for best novel by a Californian. He continued to publish books, later in 1936, he published Dubious Battle, and a San Francisco News series entitled ‘The Harvest Gypsies.’ Steinbeck is appalled by the living conditions of the workers he interviews, and later publishes the series as a book entitled Their Blood Is Strong. Later in 1937 Of Mice and Men was published earning him a New York Drama Critics Circle Award.In 1938 he published The Long Valley which is a collection of short stories. In 1939, Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath which was Steinbeck’s greatest critical success. The book is wi
ldly popular with readers, but also attracts virulent critics who decry the book’s ‘vulgar’ language, several libraries even banned the book. In 1940, Steinbeck got to direct the film version of the Grapes of Wrath, starring Henry Fonda as Tom Joad. Steinbeck receives both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for the novel. In 1941, Steinbeck then separates from his first wife, and moves to New York with another woman named Gwyndolyn Conger. In 1942, Steinbeck publishes The Moon is Down. March 29, 1943, Steinbeck married to Gwyndolyn Conger (2nd wife). He later traveled to cover World War II as a correspondent for a newspaper company. Steinbeck is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story for his work on the Alfred Hitchcock picture Lifeboat but it went to someone else instead. In the same year, Steinbeck’s first child, son Thomas Steinbeck, was born and then in 1946, Steinbeck’s second child, John Steinbeck IV, was born. In 1948, Steinbeck’s close friend was killed in a car accident and a few months later, his second wife divorces Steinbeck. In 1950, Steinbeck married his third Elaine Anderson Scott (last wife). In 1952, Steinbeck published the book East of Eden and he considered it his finest work. In 1961, Steinbeck published his final novel the winter of our discontent and in 1962, Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1968, John Steinbeck died of a heart attack in New York City.