John Steinbeck Biography Essay

516 Words3 Pages

Wimberly 1

TyBo Wimberly
Docter
English III
10/30/15
John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck, Jr., born on February 27, 1902 in Salinas, California, was an American author of twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row, the multi-generation epic East of Eden, and the novellas Of Mice and Men, and The Red Pony Ernst. The Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath, widely attributed to be part of the American literary canon, is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece. Steinbeck had a happy growing up with 3 sisters. His father, John Steinbeck Sr. had several jobs trying to put food on the table. He owned a feed and grain store, managed a flour plant, and served as treasurer of Monterey County. On the other hand, his mother Olive Hamilton Steinbeck, was a school teacher until she got married.
As a kid, Steinbeck knew from an early age that he wanted to be a writer. He would often lock himself in his bedroom to write his poems and stories. In 1920, he attended Stanford University and attended Stanford for 6 years, until 1926 and he dropped out of the university an ungraduated. Steinbeck moved to New York for a couple of years after he dropped out to try to be a freelance type of author. Things did not go out as well as he …show more content…

While living with his parents, he took a job as care take in Lake Tahoe. During that period of time, John Steinbeck wrote his first novel Cup of Gold (1929). Around the same time, he married his wife, Carol Henning. Cup of Gold was the start of John Steinbeck’s career, in which he voiced a distrust of society and glorified the anarchistic individualist typical of the rebellious 1920s. With his wife by his side supporting him the entire way, getting a job and starting to bringing money in with her annual paycheck and supporting her husband, Steinbeck went into full time on his