John Ernst Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California, on February 27, 1902 of German and Irish parents. During summers he worked as a hired hand on nearby ranches, nourishing his impression of the California countryside and its people.
After graduating from Salinas High School in 1919, Steinbeck attended Stanford University. Originally an English major, he pursued a program of independent study and his attendance was sporadic. During this time he worked periodically at various jobs and left Stanford permanently in 1925 to pursue his writing career in New York. However, he was unsuccessful in getting any of his writing published and finally returned to California. His first novel, Cup of Gold was published in 1929, but attracted little attention. His two subsequent novels, The Pastures of Heaven and To a God Unknown, were also poorly received by the literary world.
Steinbeck married his first wife, Carol Henning in 1930. They lived in Pacific Grove where much of the material for Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row was gathered. Tortilla Flat (1935) marked the turning point in Steinbeck's literary career. It received the California Commonwealth Club's Gold Medal for best novel by a California author. Steinbeck continued writing, relying upon extensive research and his personal observation of the human condition for his stories. The Grapes of Wrath (1939) won the Pulitzer Prize.
In 1943 Steinbeck moved to New York City, his home for the rest of his life. His twelve-year marriage to Carol Henning ended in 1942. Next year he married the singer Gwyndolyn Conger, they had two sons, Thom and John. However, the marriage was unhappy and they were divorced in 1949. Steinbeck spent summers at Sag Harbor and travelled in Europe.
During World War II Steinbeck was a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune in Great Britain and the Mediterranean area. He wrote such government propaganda as the novel The Moon is Down (1942), which depicted resistance movement in a small town occupied by the Nazis. Steinbeck had visited Europe in 1937 after gaining success with Of Mice and Men, and met on a Swedish ship two Norwegians, with whom he had celebrated Norway's independence day. Some of his dispatches were later collected and made into Once There Was a War.
In 1950 Steinbeck married Elaine Scott. His son John was hospitalized for codeine addiction at age seven, and he also had much problems in later years with drugs and alcohol. He died in 1991.
In 1959 Steinbeck spent nearly a year at Discove Cottage in England working with Morte d'Arthur. After returning to the United States he travelled around his country with his poodle, Charley, and published in 1962 Travels with Charley in search of America (1962). His son John wrote in his memoir that Steinbeck was too shy to talk to any of the people in the book. "He couldn't handle that amount of interaction. So, the book is actually a great novel."
In later years he did much special reporting abroad, dividing his time between New York and California. He went to Vietnam to report on the war, and the New York Post attacked him for betraying his liberal past.
John Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 “...for his realistic as well as imaginative writings, distinguished by a sympathetic humor and a keen social perception.”
Throughout his life John Steinbeck remained a private person who shunned publicity. He died of heart attack in New York City on December 20, 1968. His ashes were placed in the Garden of Memories Cemetery in Salinas.
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