John Ernest Steinbeck was an American author born in Salinas, California in 1902. He wrote several famous novels including Of Mice and Men, East of Eden, and Cannery Row. Steinbeck had a varied career, graduating from high school in 1919, attending but not graduating from Stanford University, getting married in 1930, and publishing his first book in 1929. He went on to win several prestigious awards including the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 in recognition of his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception.