The Biography of John Steinbeck
The Biography of John Steinbeck
Born February 27, 1902 to a County Treasurer and a schoolteacher, John Steinbeck was raised in the small town of Salinas, California. With no more than a population of 2500, this rural farming community influenced and formed many of John Steinbeck’s stories. Being the third of four children and the only boy, John Steinbeck discovered writing and even though he was very shy nature, he sent in numerous articles to various publishings.
Olive Hamilton Steinbeck, John Steinbeck’s mother, was an Irish immigrant. As described in a small portion of John Steinbeck’s book, East of Eden, his mother left her parents at fifteen to become a schoolteacher. Unlike his mother, John Steinbeck Senor, was considered very stern and “a man intensely disappointed in himself” (Reef 12). His father was a government official in Salinas County. The reason his father was disappointed with himself was partly due because he had chosen a safe practical course of life. He would later support and admire his son for “laying down his line and following it undeflected to the end.” (Reef 12).
John Steinbeck first began his academic career at West End School, the local public school, where he earned good grades. He then moved on to the small town’s high school where he excelled in writing, but began to become shy, socially secluding himself. John Steinbeck’s ninth-grade English teacher, Miss Cupp was the one he credited, with inspiring him to become a writer. She said, “like Malory and Stevenson, he could create magic words” (Reef 19). John Steinbeck entered Stanford University in the fall of 1919. Unlike the other freshmen attending their first year of collage, John Steinbeck was there to learn not for a degree. He decided to study topics that interested him, taking classes that would aid his writing career. He took everything from literature, classical Greek and history, to human anatomy. When he did not like a professor or their assignments he either dropped the class or simply did not do them. In 1925 John Steinbeck graduated Stanford University, but without a degree.
On November 5, 1925 John Steinbeck moved to New York and worked as both a manual laborer (working on the construction of Madison Square Garden) and journalist while writing his first two novels, which were not successful (Reef 25). In 1930, John Steinbeck moved back to California and...