Historical Figure
John Steinbeck
1902–1968
American writer (1902–1968)
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Biography
John Ernst Steinbeck was an American writer. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception". He has been called "a giant of American letters".
Timeline
The story of John Steinbeck, told in moments.
Publishes Of Mice and Men. It sells well. More importantly, it gets banned. He writes The Grapes of Wrath over five months in 1938, working obsessively. He regrets it immediately after submitting it. Thinks it's too raw.
The Grapes of Wrath hits bookstores. Oklahoma bans it. California's farmers burn it. Congress investigates the conditions it describes. Eleanor Roosevelt visits migrant camps and confirms them. It sells 430,000 copies in the first year.
Wins the Pulitzer Prize for The Grapes of Wrath. The Associated Farmers of California call it 'communist propaganda.' The FBI opens a file on Steinbeck. It'll grow for 30 years.
Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He thinks he doesn't deserve it. The New York Times agrees. Steinbeck tells his wife: 'I'm not the right man.' He writes only one more novel.
Dies of heart failure in New York at 66. The FBI had kept a file on him for three decades. His ashes are taken back to Salinas. He'd written about that valley his whole life and never really left.
In Their Own Words (20)
For the first time I am working on a book that is not limited and that will take every bit of experience and thought and feeling that I have.
Journal entry (11 June 1938), published in Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath, 1938-1941 (1990) edited by Robert DeMott, 1990
It is a nice thing to be working and believing in my work again. I hope I can keep the drive. I only feel whole and well when it is this way.
Letter to Elizabeth Otis, once he had begun The Grapes of Wrath (1 June 1938), 1938
I seen too many guys with land in their head. They never get none under their hand.
Ch. 4, p. 75, 1937
Well, God knows he don't need any brains to buck barley bags. But don't you try to put nothing over, Milton. I got my eye on you.
The boss to George in Ch. 2; "buck" here means to work at lifting and throwing the sacks of barley, 1937
What the hell kind of bed you giving us, anyways. We don’t want no pants rabbits.
Ch. 2, p. 20; "pants rabbits" refers to fleas, lice or crabs., 1937
Artifacts (15)
List of Books Published by Franklin Book Program in Iran
Unknown authorUnknown author
Getty Research Institute (IA gri 33125000004982)
Hatfield, R. G. (Robert Griffith), 1815-1879 Hatfield, O. P
U and I (IA ui1960univ)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. University High School
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