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John Steinbeck Biography

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In 1902, in Salinas, California, John Steinbeck was born. The setting of most of his fiction work was from his life in Monterey County. Between 1920 and 1926, he attended Stanford University. He ended up not graduating from Stanford. He instead chose to take up manual labor, later on creating the real life experiences for the main characters in some of his most famous novels. The first novel Steinbeck published was Cup of Gold in 1929. He then released The Pastures of Heaven and then To a God Unknown, which was in 1933. These three works of Steinbeck were considered unsuccessful. In 1935, Steinbeck finally had his first hit, called Tortilla Flat. In 1936 he released the novel In Dubious Battle. This was his first novel to enclose the impactful social commentary that defines his best work. He received more praise for writing the novella Of Mice and Men. Steinbeck won a Pulitzer Prize for writing The Grapes of Wrath. This is considered one of his greatest works, and maybe even one of the greatest works of all time. It also won him a National Book Award. There was later on a movie made for it. Later on he went and collected marine life in Mexico with an independent biologist named Edward Ricketts. The two worked together to write Sea of Cortez in 1941. During World War II, Steinbeck served as a war correspondent. When World War II ended, he published Cannery Row, The Pearl, and The Bus. These works were more sentimental and softened than his previous works. In 1930, Steinbeck married a woman named Carol Henning. Gwyndolyn Conger was Steinbeck’s second wife. They got married in 1943. They ended up having two children. Gwyndolyn left Steinbeck in 1948. To make things worse, Ricketts also died. He did finally become happy again by marrying Elaine Scott in 1950. He released a contentious novel called East of Eden in

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