In 1930, Steinbeck married Carol Henning whom he had met while working and writing at Lake Tahoe. This novel sold 1,500 copies, and its publication began a decade of recognition and material prosperity for Steinbeck. Eventually he returned to California, and his first book, Cup of Gold, appeared in 1929, two months before the stock market crash. Leaving Stanford, Steinbeck moved to New York and worked for five years at various jobs, writing and drifting. It was during this time that Steinbeck met many of the types of people described with compassion in his later writing.

The agricultural industry at this time relied on cheap, transient labor. While in college, he continued to write creatively, and he worked for a time on neighboring farms, especially Spreckels Sugar Ranch. Even though he remained at Stanford until 1925, he never graduated. Steinbeck graduated from high school and went on to Stanford University. He worked at various jobs and one in particular - as a ranch hand on some of the local ranches - later led him to images used in Of Mice and Men. In high school, Steinbeck did well in English and edited the school yearbook. His abiding love of nature and his thoughts about man's relationship to his environment are present in most of his works. As a youngster, he also explored the caves and swimming holes around Salinas and watched the changes of seasons. This early impression of the workers' lifestyles was added to later memories when Steinbeck spent time with these workers as an adult. He would return again and again to those early influences for symbols and themes.ĭuring these early years, John's home was comfortable, and his father often drove the boy and his two sisters around the valley where they saw the workers and field hands in their poor shacks. Young John grew up hearing the rhythms of the Bible and listening to the magical stories of the Round Table from Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. During his early years, Steinbeck's mother read to him from books such as Treasure Island and Robin Hood. Situated between the Santa Lucia range and the Gabilan Mountains, this valley in west central California is bordered on the north by Monterey Bay and on the south by San Luis Obispo. Steinbeck grew up in the beautiful, fertile Salinas Valley, and most of his memorable novels and short stories would be set in California. John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr., was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California, to a father, John Ernst Steinbeck, who had settled in California shortly after the Civil War, and a mother, Olive Hamilton Steinbeck, who was a public schoolteacher.

John steinbeck of mice and men book