John Steinbeck

A giant of American literature, John Steinbeck is the author of several classic twentieth-century novels. Born in the Salinas area of California that formed the backdrop to many of his novels, Steinbeck published his first novel, Cup of Gold, in 1929. Six years later the critical success of the comic novel Tortilla Flat ushered in Steinbeck’s golden age. The trilogy of ‘dust bowl’ novels he produced between 1936 and 1939 examined the desperate struggles of common labourers caught in the maelstrom of the Great Depression; Of Mice and Men, published in 1937, and 1939’s The Grapes of Wrath, in particular, have endured as near-mythic works of American fiction.

In the 1940s and 50s Steinbeck continued to produce seminal work such as The Moon is Down, Cannery Row, The Pearl and East of Eden. In 1960, Steinbeck embarked on a road trip across America with his trusty dog Charley, an experience recounted in 1962’s Travelling with Charley. In 1962 Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.