American famed writer of best-selling novels that were made into films. Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. The Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is considered Steinbeck’s masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. In the first 75 years after it was published, it sold 14 million copies.
He is also widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas Of Mice and Men (1937) and The Red Pony (1937).
He said he could not remember a time when he did not write, but he was 14 when he formalized his ambition. He was a dreamer as a kid, not an active participant. He loved horses and played polo at Stanford, where the only courses he took were those that held his interest. After six years, he left without graduating and took the same approach to jobs, staying only as long as they intrigued him.
After he published his first book and married Carol Henning, he settled in Pacific Grove on the California coastal county. It was there he did his best body of work; “Tortilla Flat” came out in 1935 and in 1937, both “Of Mice and Men” and “The Red Pony.” Extremely private, he hated his fame and notoriety. In 1939 he fell in love with a pretty 20-year-old singer and brought her home, turning the matter over to the two women. His wife left and he married Gwyn Conger 11 days after his divorce from Carol.
He and Gwyn had two sons, Thom on 2 August 1944 and John IV on 12 June 1946. Gwyn was an alcoholic and depressed and John needed a strong woman to motivate him: they divorced in 1948. His third and last marriage was happy, to Elaine Scott and they settled in New York City.
Steinbeck died of a heart attack on 20 December 1968 at age 66 in New York City, and his ashes were buried in Salinas, the place that he loved most.
Link to Wikipedia biography