By: Jennifer Maughan
Facts about John Steinbeck's life tend to surprise those who are interested in learning more about the award-winning author. While John Steinbeck is known as a great American novelists, the man who penned The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men and Cannery Row was hardly the fame-seeking, forthcoming type.
Early Years
- Steinbeck claims Irish and German ancestry.
- Steinbeck's mother, Olive Hamilton Steinbeck, passed her love of the arts to her son.
- He had three sisters-two older and one younger.
- As a child, Steinbeck's favorite book was Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory.
- As a teenager, Steinbeck worked on local ranges as a hired hand.
- He graduated from Salinas High School in 1919.
- The famous writer never graduated from college.
Writing Years
- In 1925, Steinbeck left California for New York to pursue a writing career, but returned home unsuccessful.
- Steinbeck's 1935 novel, Tortilla Flats, won the California Commonwealth Club's Gold Medal award for best novel.
- During the World War II, Steinbeck worked as a war correspondent for a New York newspaper.
- Most of Steinbeck's novels center around Depression-era characters struggling for survival, respect and dignity.
- Many of Steinbeck's novels feature themes of social protest, such as In Dubious Battle (1936) and The Moon Is Down (1942).
- Seventeen of Stenbeck's works were turned into Hollywood films, often multiple times.
- Steinbeck received an Academy Award nomination in 1944 for Lifeboat, an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
- During his life, Steinbeck received some of the world's most prestigious awards: the Pulitzer Prize (Grapes of Wrath, 1940), the Nobel Prize for Literature (1962) and the United States Medal of Freedom (1964).
Personal Life
- Steinbeck hated being famous and stayed out of the public eye as much as he could.
- He married three times and had two children, both sons.
- His best friend was marine biologist, Ed Ricketts, and they wrote a non-fiction book called The Sea of Cortez after a 6-week expedition to Mexico to study marine life.
- John Steinbeck was actually John Ernst Steinbeck III; his son was also named John Ernst Steinbeck to carry on the family tradition.
