![Picture](/uploads/4/3/9/3/43931945/5865160_orig.jpg)
Biography of John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. was born on February 27,1902 and raised with modest means. His father,John Steinbeck, worked different jobs, such as owning a feed-and-grain store, managed a flour plant, and served as treasurer of the Monterey County. His mother, Olive Steinbeck, was a teacher at the time. He had three sisters and lived a happy childhood, and he was shy, but very smart. At 14, he would lock himself in his room and wrote poems and stories. When he grew up, he went to Stanford University to please his parents, but then dropped out in 1925 without a degree. After Stanford, he tried to be a freelance writer, a writer that can write about any topic for any publisher. He moved to New York City from California and started working as a construction worker and a newspaper reporter. Later, he moved back to California and worked as a caretaker in Lake Tahoe. In 1929 he wrote Cup of Gold and at that time met and married his wife, Carol Henning. His hard work earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and served as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune in 1940 in World War I. He also traveled to Mexico to collect marine life with a marine biologist friend, Edward F. Ricketts. Their partnership ended with the book Sea of Cortez in 1941 which described marine life in the Gulf of California.He then died in New York City from a heart disease in 1968.
(http://www.biography.com/people/john-steinbeck-9493358#synopsis)