Inside Back Cover

About The Author

John Steinbeck (1902-1968) was born in Salinas, California.  He attended Stanford University but never graduated. He spent his summers working on nearby ranches and later with migrant workers on ranches.  He became aware of the harsher aspects of migrant life and the darker side of human nature, which supplied him with material for Of Mice and Men.  He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and East of Eden (1952) and the novella Of Mice and Men (1937).  He was an author of twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books and five collections of short stories.  Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.  Among his later works are The Winter of Our Discontent (1961) and Travels with Charley (1962), a travelogue in which Steinbeck wrote about his impressions during a three-month tour in a truck that led him through 40 American states.  John Steinbeck died in New York City on December 20, 1968 of heart disease and congestive heart failure.  He was 66, and had been a life-long smoker.