John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California, on February 27, 1902, the son of John Ernst, a government employee, and Olive Hamilton Steinbeck, a schoolteacher. He grew up in the midst of an agricultural community on the east side of the coastal mountains, and when he turned seventeen, he began a six-year relationship with Stanford University, sporadically attending classes in literature and writing but never attaining a degree. In 1925, he gave up furthering his education and moved to New York City, where he worked for a time as a laborer on the construction project of Madison Square Gardens. He became discouraged about not finding a publisher for his writing, so one year later he returned to California.

He lived off and on at his parents' home, even after marrying Carol Henning, the first of his three wives. He continued to write, and in 1929 Cup of Gold, his first...