John Ernst Steinbeck was in the course of his mixed career a common laborer, world traveler, novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and playwright. Although he will be most importantly remembered for his eighteen volumes of fiction and eight works of nonfiction, his three plays are an interesting sidelight in his long career. Of Irish and German ancestry, he was born in Salinas Valley, California, an area that served as the setting for many of his best novels and one of his plays, Of Mice and Men (1937).

Steinbeck was both a good student and athlete in high school, but his attendance at Stanford University was sporadic (1919-1920, 1922-1923, 1924-1925). In college he became interested in biological and ecological studies, but he never completed a degree. His first marriage in 1930 to Carol Henning ended in divorce in 1942; his second marriage in 1943 to Gwyndolyn Conger ended in divorce in 1948. He married his...