John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. was an American author and the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature winner "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception." He has been called "a giant of American letters."

What did John Steinbeck get for his 9th birthday?

On his ninth birthday, his Aunt Mollie gave him a copy of Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur: “When I first read it, I must have been already enamored of words because the old and obsolete words delighted me.” Steinbeck and his younger sister Mary would imagine the turrets of Camelot in the sandstone erosions in the ...

Was Steinbeck a socialist?

Steinbeck was a socialist who, like many intellectuals of his era, idealized the working class and accentuated class divisions in his writings.