John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California, in 1902. The town is a few miles from the Pacific Coast and near the fertile Salinas Valley—an area that was to be the background of much of his fiction. He studied marine biology at Stanford University but left without taking a degree and, after a series of laboring jobs, began to write. An attempt at a freelance lit-erary career in New York City failed, and he returned to California, continuing to write in a lonely cottage. Popular success came to him only in 1935 with Tor-tilla Flat. That book’s promise was confirmed by suc-ceeding works—In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, and especially The Grapes of Wrath, a novel so powerful that it remains among the archetypes of American culture. Often set in California, Steinbeck’s later books include Cannery Row, The Wayward Bus, East of Eden, The Short Reign of Pippin IV, and Travels with Charley. He died in 1968, having won a Nobel Prize in 1962. In announcing the award, the Swedish Academy declared: “He had no mind to be an unoffending comforter and entertainer. Instead, the topics he chose were serious and denunciatory, for instance the bitter strikes on California’s fruit and cotton plantations. ... His literary power steadily gained impetus. ... The little masterpiece Of Mice and Men ... was followed by those incomparable short stories which he collected together in the vol-ume The Long Valley. The way had now been paved for the great work ... the epic chronicle The Grapes of Wrath.
