The Steinbecks were members of the Episcopal Church, although Steinbeck later became agnostic. John's mother, Olive Hamilton (1867–1934), a former school teacher, shared Steinbeck's passion for reading and writing. His father, John Ernst Steinbeck (1862–1935), served as Monterey County treasurer. The family farm in Heiligenhaus, Mettmann, Germany, is still named 'Großsteinbeck'. He arrived in the United States in 1858, shortening the family name to Steinbeck. Johann Adolf Großsteinbeck (1828–1913), Steinbeck's paternal grandfather, was a founder of Mount Hope, a short-lived messianic farming colony in Palestine that disbanded after Arab attackers killed his brother and raped his brother's wife and mother-in-law. He was of German, English, and Irish descent. Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists. Most of Steinbeck's work is set in central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. In the first 75 years after it was published, it sold 14 million copies. The Pulitzer Prize–winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas The Red Pony (1933) and Of Mice and Men (1937). He has been called 'a giant of American letters.' ĭuring his writing career, he authored 33 books, with one book coauthored alongside Edward Ricketts, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. ( / ˈ s t aɪ n b ɛ k/ February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer and the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature winner 'for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception'.

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