john steinbeck biography book

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John Steinbeck Assorted Collection by Collier

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John Steinbeck Assorted Collection by Collier Hardcover

Publisher P. F. Collier & Son
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Mary Shelley: The Strange True Tale of Frankenstein's Creator

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ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000UDN5EU
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.25 pounds

About the author

Catherine reef.

Catherine Reef is the recipient of the 2020 Children's Book Guild Nonfiction Award, which recognizes her significant contribution to the quality of nonfiction for young readers. Her many books for young people and adults have earned wide recognition.

In recent years Catherine has specialized in biography. Her most recent book, MARY SHELLEY: THE STRANGE TRUE TALE OF FRANKENSTEIN'S CREATOR, introduces the woman who, at eighteen, authored one of the world's most enduring horror classics. This story of love, tragedy and survival gained for Catherine the NOBLE Award for Young Adult Nonfiction and was named to several year-end "best" lists.

Catherine's dual biography, FRIDA & DIEGO: ART, LOVE, LIFE, explores the lives and work of two remarkable artists admired in Mexico and throughout the world, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, in a colorful, richly illustrated format. One of Booklist’s Top Ten Arts Books for Youth 2014, FRIDA & DIEGO received starred reviews from Kirkus, School Library Journal and Booklist.

Catherine also wrote THE BRONTE SISTERS: THE BRIEF LIVES OF CHARLOTTE, EMILY, AND ANNE. This popular young adult book received three starred reviews and was named to several annual lists of “best” books, including Kirkus’s Best Books for Teens, Bank Street College’s Best Children’s Books and the Amelia Bloomer Project List.

Among Catherine’s other notable books are FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE: THE COURAGEOUS LIFE OF THE LEGENDARY NURSE, recipient of four starred reviews, an Outstanding Science Trade Book and a Notable Social Studies Trade Book; and VICTORIA: PORTRAIT OF A QUEEN, one of the Denver Library's Best and Brightest Books for 2017 and Bank Street College's Best Books of 2017.

Catherine works hard at her writing, but she also loves to travel, read, work with her hands and spend time with her family and friends. She likes to cook and can bake a prize-worthy apple pie.

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Steinbeck An Author Profile

By Gabriel Blanchard

The moral and atmospheric power of steinbeck's writing has justly won him an enduring place in the american canon..

One of the foremost American novelists of his century, John Steinbeck’s life began in a very humdrum way. Born in Salinas, California in 1902, his family’s Anglo-German ancestry and affiliation with the Episcopal Church were socially respectable without being conspicuous. He attended Stanford University, where he studied English literature, but left without graduating. He had a difficult start as an author and journalist, supporting himself through odd jobs in agriculture and manufacturing; he settled in the Monterey Bay area just as the Great Depression was beginning. It was against this backdrop that he wrote some of his most celebrated work, much of which takes place in the rich valleys or on the central coast of California.

His first successful novel, Tortilla Flat , depicted a cast of impoverished men recently returned from the First World War, parodying Arthurian tales of chivalry with stories of dissolute, lecherous, disorderly protagonists. Steinbeck followed it the next year with In Dubious Battle , a novel about agricultural workers attempting (with mixed success) to unionize. This book was the first instantiation of a theme that characterized much of his writing, and indeed much of his life: namely, the cruelty and absurdity of the contemporary American economic system, even in the face of massive disasters like the Dust Bowl—a period of severe drought and dust storms that devastated the agricultural economy of the Great Plains throughout much of the 1930s. The Dust Bowl formed the setting of perhaps his most famous novel, The Grapes of Wrath , which articulates this theme with exceptional clarity and bitterness:

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. … And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate—died of malnutrition—because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.

Books ain't no good. A guy needs somebody—to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

The novella Of Mice and Men (published in 1937, two years before The Grapes of Wrath ) earned him international acclaim, culminating in his winning the 1962 Nobel Prize for Literature. It too is set in the harsh conditions of the Depression, but it is a much more intimate tale; it focuses on two friends named George and Lennie, the latter of whom is seriously mentally disabled and unable to function without his friend’s help and protection, partly due to his immense strength, which he finds difficult to control. Here, the economic hardships they face take a backseat to a terrible personal tragedy, reminiscent of the traps of circumstance that often occur in the plays of ancient Athens.

This personal focus aligns with Steinbeck’s third prominent (and longest) title, East of Eden , which he regarded as his finest work. It is set in the Salinas Valley, just inland from the Pacific coast, a region of immense natural beauty with a Mediterranean climate, which Steinbeck describes in lush detail. East of Eden is an involved familial story, reminiscent of Æschylus ‘ Oresteia , Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra , or Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights in its multi-generational complexity. He uses the principal story of the Hamilton family to explore themes of freedom, malice, and fate, interweaving the histories of his characters with an analysis of the Biblical story of Cain and Abel. The (mis-transliterated) Hebrew word timshel from Genesis 4:7 , re-translated as “thou mayest rule” by one of the characters in the novel, suggests that despite the tragedies and sins of people’s lives, they still have the capacity to grow and change for the better.

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Every week, we publish a profile of one of the figures from the CLT author bank . For an introduction to classic authors, see our guest post from Keith Nix , founder of the Veritas School in Richmond, VA.

If you liked this post, take a look at some of our other pieces here at the Journal, like these author profiles of Geoffrey Chaucer , St. Thomas More , and Simone de Beauvoir , this review of Graham Greene’s novel The Power and the Glory , or these “Great Conversation” essays on the idea of causality and the history of medicine .

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John Steinbeck

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on John Steinbeck's The Pearl . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

The Pearl: Introduction

The pearl: plot summary, the pearl: detailed summary & analysis, the pearl: themes, the pearl: quotes, the pearl: characters, the pearl: symbols, the pearl: theme wheel, brief biography of john steinbeck.

Historical Context of The Pearl

Other books related to the pearl.

Full Title: The Pearl
When Written: 1944
Where Written: California
When Published: 1947
Literary Period: Modernist novel
Genre: Novella/ Parable
Setting: La Paz, Baja California Sur
Climax: Kino’s beating of Juana and his killing of a man in protection of the pearl
Point of View: Third person (from the perspective of the villagers who pass down the tale through generations)

Extra Credit for The Pearl

From Kino to Kino. It is assumed that Kino was named after Eusebius Kino, a Jesuit missionary who explored the Gulf region in the 17th century.

From Film to Fiction. Steinbeck wrote The Pearl on an invitation from Emilio Fernandez, a well-known Mexican filmmaker, to write a screenplay depicting Mexican life. In consequence, The Pearl features few characters, simple and intense action, and cinematic viewpoints.

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John Steinbeck

Host Bob Edwards talks to biographer Jackson Benson, co-editor of the new book, John Steinbeck: America and Americans and Selected Non-fiction. Steinbeck was born 100 years ago today. (7:02-7:20) Check out our Web feature, The Grapes of Wrath .

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Steinbeck Studies

The "True" Story: LIFE Magazine, Horace Bristol, and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath

Samantha Baskind
University of Idaho Department of English
Volume 15, Number 2, Fall 2004
10.1353/stn.2004.0029
View Citation

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