John Steinbeck was born in 1902 in Salinas, California, and is known for a large body of work, most notably The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and Of Mice and Men. He attended Stanford University, but left the school after six years without earning his bachelor’s degree. Steinbeck then moved to New York, where he was employed as a journalist for The American and as a laborer. He later returned to California and worked in the Lake Tahoe region.
During this time, Steinbeck completed his first novel, Cup of Gold, which was published in 1929. He married Carol Henning in 1930, and then published several novels in the 1930s, among them Of Mice and Men (1937). In 1940, Steinbeck won a Pulitzer...