47 pages • 1 hour read
John SteinbeckA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
John Steinbeck is one of America’s most prominent literary voices. His novels and short stories defined his generation and are canonized in American literature.
John Steinbeck was born in 1902 in Salinas, California. The Salinas Valley is the foundational setting for most of his literature, including The Wayward Bus, though the town names Rebel Corner and San Juan are fictional. Steinbeck and his first wife Carol settled in Monterey in 1930. They were relatively poor, as the Great Depression rocked their employment prospects. In Monterey, Steinbeck met the marine biologist Ed Ricketts, who became a mentor, friend, and inspiration for characters in Steinbeck’s novels and a partner in his nonfiction book about marine life.
Steinbeck published his first novel, Cup of Gold, in 1929. He wrote several other stories and essays afterward, but he worked in relative obscurity until the 1935 publication of his novella Tortilla Flat. This novella explores a rag-tag group of friends struggling to make ends meet in an impoverished America. The social and human analysis in the novella became characteristic of Steinbeck’s literature, which exposes how society fails to nurture the potential of the human spirit.
In 1937, Steinbeck published the novella Of Mice and Men, which became a classic of American literature.
By John Steinbeck
Cannery Row
John Steinbeck
East of Eden
John Steinbeck
Flight
John Steinbeck
In Dubious Battle
John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck
Sweet Thursday
John Steinbeck
The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights
John Steinbeck
The Chrysanthemums
John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck
The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck
The Log From The Sea of Cortez
John Steinbeck
The Long Valley
John Steinbeck
The Moon Is Down
John Steinbeck
The Pearl
John Steinbeck
The Red Pony
John Steinbeck
The Winter Of Our Discontent
John Steinbeck
To a God Unknown
John Steinbeck
Tortilla Flat
John Steinbeck
Travels With Charley
John Steinbeck