John Steinbeck: A Great American Writer John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California in 1902. He made his native region of Monterey Bay the setting for most of his fictional novels. Steinbeck studied marine biology at Stanford University between 1920 and 1926. Three years later, he wrote his first ... The Winter Of Our Discontent. This novel did not do very well with readers, and many critics stated that Steinbeck was exhausted. In 1962, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the people still thought of him as a has-been. Steinbeck did not take his humiliation lightly. He ended up spe...

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• Grade Level: High School

... study literature at Stanford University. During his studies there he worked with underpaid manual laborers. He ended up dropping out of Stanford and joining the underpaid laborers for a job (Green). Prior to Steinbeck's life there was a lot of hate and discrimination going on in the world. There was racism and hatred toward African American people. and towards the Native American population. ... Steinbeck grew up learning and constantly hearing about these problems and events. These things influenced Steinbeck's writing through references to these problems throughout his literature (Tut...

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• Grade Level: High School