John Steinbeck was an American novelist and storyteller who rose to international prominence for his works depicting the plight and everyday lives of laborers. He was born on February 27, 1902 in Salinas, California, which would serve as the site of many of his best known works. Steinbeck went to Stanford at age 17 and spent the next five years intermittently enrolled and taking literature and writing courses, which were the only classes in which he was interested. He left in 1925 without achieving a degree and set out for New York City, where he worked as a laborer and occasional freelance writer. He returned to California in the late 1920s to establish himself as a serious author. It was there, in Tahoe, that he completed his first novel, The Cup of Gold (1929).

Steinbeck published several works in the early thirties that failed to achieve significant notice. His luck began to change with the 1935 release of Tortilla Flat, a humorous novel depicting the lives of rural Mexican workers, which was his first commercial success. Having solidified his distinct, naturalistic prose, he continued to publish works to great acclaim, including Of Mice Mice and Men (1937) and The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Both dealt with the misfortunes of workers, particularly farmers. The Grapes of Wrath portrayed the plight of a family of Oklahoma farmers attempting to escape the Dust Bowl and reverse their economic fortunes in California. It earned Steinbeck the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1940.

Steinbeck continued writing throughout the 40s and 50s. He served as a war correspondent during World War II and produced several works of propaganda on behalf of the United States Government, including an indelible short novel, The Moon is Down. In 1952, he published what he considered to be his magnum opus: the biblical allegorical novel East of Eden. He also wrote several screenplays for his own works, including the 1955 film adaptation of East of Eden. Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962 “for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception.”

Steinbeck’s work is notable for its commentary on the social and economic position of the lower classes, especially concerning physical laborers. He was renowned for his depictions of the working man and the human conditions, as well as his powerful allegories. He died in 1968 and remains one of the most widely read and influential American authors of the twentieth century.