John Steinbeck

John Ernst Steinbeck Jr.  February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968

An American author of some 30 books, Pulitzer and Nobel Prize in Literature winner, social commentator and champion of the poor.

“A giant of American letters.”

Steinbeck is one of our all time favorite authors and so we were delighted to discover he is a second generation Irish American who visited his Derry home and grew to love Ireland through his grandparents. Not only that, but our adopted US home is in the heart of “Steinbeck Country”, no better reason to feature this iconic writer and claim him as one of our own.

Did you know…

John Steinbeck was a native of California, an Irish American whose ancestors came from Mulkeeragh, near Ballykelly, County Derry.

Irish Roots

Steinbeck’s maternal grandfather, Samuel Hamilton, emigrated to New York at the height of the Irish Famine. There he met an Irish girl, Elizabeth Fagan, and when they married, they moved to California and lived on a farm near Salinas.

Steinbeck spent a lot of time on his grandparents’ farm, listening to stories of Ireland. He came to describe Ireland as ‘a green paradise… a land of Kings and Heroes’. Although Steinbeck was quite young when his grandfather died, he once said it was remarkable how much he knew about the man and his homeland.

In 1952, Steinbeck visited Ireland to trace his ancestors and there he found the family cottage and past relatives in the local graveyard. Steinbeck’s novels Of Mice and Men and East of Eden were inspired by his time spent with his Irish grandparents. Indeed, one of the characters in East of Eden is called Samuel Hamilton.

Steinbeck won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 for "The Grapes of Wrath," and the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 for his “realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception” 

The Irish tradition of storytelling

So much of his work has direct parallels with the dark history of Irish emigration. It is very clear that, given his close relationship with his Irish grandparents and their gift for storytelling, their voices speak through his writing.

The “California Novels”

Steinbeck published 30 books but most of his best known work is set all around our US home base of Carmel Valley in central California, the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His ‘California Novels’ bring to life the crushing poverty and injustice at the time of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. His central characters were the downtrodden, those forced from their farms or outcasts from society searching for hope and clinging to survival. 

Sixty years after his death his books still have a freshness, relevance and craftsmanship that make them part of the school curriculum on both sides of the Atlantic.

The California Central Valley is now prosperous, the world centre of technology and home to billionaires. We drive daily through the rich farmland of this most beautiful part of the world. Even Cannery Row is now a famous tourist attraction and close to our US home in Monterey County - but in Steinbeck’s story it was a far bleaker prospect.

If you haven’t read his work - start now, only 30 great books to go!