Steinbeck was born in California where his father was a government official. He attended, but did not graduate from, Stanford University. He married in 1930, at age 28. His first three novels were unsuccessful; however, he gained important experience with the manual labor which supported him during this period. With his fourth novel, “Tortilla Flat” (1935), he began to achieve commercial success. During World War II he wrote propaganda for the United States, including “The Moon is Down” (1942) about Norwegians under Nazi rule. He continued to write after the war, but his best known works remain those he completed during the 1930s. He died in New York at age 66.