John Steinbeck was born in 1902 in California. He lived most of his life there and often it is the setting of his novels. He was one of America's great writers because of his unique contributions to literature. He gave literature a different view of America through the eyes of the working and lower classes. Through his work he shared with the reader the morals and values of these people and showed their life style. Steinbeck also contributed to literature by capturing the dialects of his characters allowing the reader to better understand the lives of these people. Over the course of his lifetime he wrote more than 30 novels and won numerous awards. His first success was with the novel Tortilla Flat which in 1935 he won Gold Medal for Best Novel by a Californian. He continued finding success after Of Mice and Men in 1937 and Grapes of Wrath in 1939 for which he won the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Award. Much of his work is based around the Depression and World War II, for which he corresponded for the New York Herald Times. In 1962 Steinbeck was highly honored when he received the Nobel Prize for literature for, "...his realistic as well as imaginative writings, distinguished by a sympathetic humor and keen social perception." While He is know for his novels taking place in California in a farm, ranch, or small town and the focus being on the harsh conditions that his characters must deal with, he did towards the end of his life write The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, it was published in 1979 after his death. John Steinbeck died in 1968 but he left a legacy of novels that so vividly captured the lives of lower-class Americans.
             ...