PRESENTATION OUTLINE
John Steinbeck
1902-1968
Kaly R. And Nate G.
CHILDHOOD
John was born February 27,1902 to John Ernst Steinbeck Sr. and Olive Hamilton. He was born in Salinas, California.
EARLY LIFE
"For the most part, Steinbeck who grew up with three sisters, had a happy childhood. He was shy, but smart, and formed an early appreciation for the land, and in particular California's Salinas Valley," according to bio.com. In 1919 he enrolled in Stanford Univ., but he after six 1925 he went to New York City to be a free lance writer.
BOOK WRITING CAREER
His writing dreams in New York soon failed and he moved back to California. Steinbeck eventually went on to write professionally. "A collection of short stories, The Pastures of Heaven (1932), contained vivid descriptions of rural (farm) life among the "unfinished children of nature" in his native California valley. His second novel, To a God Unknown (1933), was his strongest statement about man's relationship to the land. With Tortilla Flat (1935) Steinbeck received critical and popular success; there are many critics who consider it his most artistically satisfying ." This information was found at notablebiographies.com.
CONTINUED
In 1939 he published what most consider his best novel, The Grapes of Wrath. At it's best the novel sold 10,000 copies per week and in 1940 it won the Pulitzer Prize.
LATER LIFE AND CAREER
After his great success, Steinbeck served as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune during World War II. During and after this Steinbeck, in his later life, had an evident decline in the material in which he was producing. The books he wrote, such as "The Winter of our Discontent", lacked Steinbeck's usual symbolism and substance. Despite the failure of several books before, "Travels with Charlie" was a large success in which he won the Nobel Prize for literature.
DEATH
Steinbeck eventually died of heart disease in his home in New York City on December 20, 1968.