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23 unusual facts about John Steinbeck


Artas, Bethlehem

Johann Gros Steinbeck (grandfather of the author John Steinbeck) and his brother Friedrich, settled there under the leadership of John Meshullam, a converted Jew and member of a British missionary society.

Blind Tom Wiggins

John Steinbeck has compared the main character in his short story, “Johnny Bear” to Blind Tom.

Cannery Row

The street name, formerly a nickname for Ocean View Avenue, became official in January 1958 to honor John Steinbeck and his well-known novel Cannery Row.

Circus Animals

Critic Toby Creswell described Circus Animals as, "a really extraordinary piece of work, as though John Steinbeck, Henry Lawson, Manning Clarke and Jerry Lee Lewis formed a band."

Corral de Tierra, California

John Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven, a short story cycle published in 1932, is set in the valley.

Crop destruction

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck tells about destruction of oranges, potatoes, pig carcasses and other agricultural products during the Great Depression.

Dorris Bowdon

Dorris Estelle Bowdon (December 27, 1914 – August 9, 2005) was an American actress, best known for her role as Rosasharn in the film adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath, starring Henry Fonda.

George and Junior

All of the original, 1940s shorts were directed by Tex Avery, who based them on George and Lennie from John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.

Heiligenhaus

Heiligenhaus also contains the ancestral family farm of the acclaimed American author John Steinbeck.

Joseph Fontenrose

He was centrally interested in Greek religion and Greek mythology; he was also an expert on John Steinbeck, commenting on the mythology in Steinbeck's work.

Ludowy Theatre

Notable plays of the time included productions by Jerzy Krasowski, such as adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men (1956) with Franciszek Pieczka (as Lenny Small) and Witold Pyrkosz (as George Milton).

Michael Rothenstein

He illustrated several books including the first UK edition of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men (1937) and Acquainted with the Night: A Book of Dreams (1949) by Nancy Price.

My Father's Dragon

The illustrations within the book are black and white done with a grease crayon on a grained paper, done by Ruth Chrisman Gannett, who also illustrated other children's books such as My Mother Is the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, Paco Goes to the Fair, Miss Hickory, Hipo the Hippo, and adult books such as Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck and Cream Hill by Lewis Stiles Gannett, the author's father and husband of the book's illustrator.

Paulo Barrozo

From an early age, Barrozo was exposed to the thought of Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, and to the literature of Machado d Assis, Shakespeare, John Steinbeck, Simone de Beauvoir, and Thomas Mann.

Robert E. Kennedy Library

Major subject areas in the collections include: book arts, environmental history, ethnic studies, fine printing, graphic arts, Julia Morgan's and John Steinbeck's first editions, landscape architecture in California, Robinson Jeffers' first editions, San Luis Obispo regional history, social history, William Randolph Hearst, and San Simeon.

Roque

A chapter in John Steinbeck's novel Sweet Thursday also describes a rivalry that arose among the town's residents over the game.

Salvatore Giuliano

After she handed the loot over, he took a diamond ring from her hand, which he wore for the rest of his life, and borrowed John Steinbeck's “In Dubious Battle” from her library before leaving (which was returned with a respectful note a week later).

Sayre, Oklahoma

In 1940 film director John Ford would use Sayre’s Beckham County Courthouse in the film The Grapes of Wrath, based on the famous book by writer John Steinbeck.

Spreckels, California

Spreckels is associated with the writer John Steinbeck, who lived and worked there for a time, and used it as a setting in Tortilla Flat.

Sydney Banks

Banks directed the Theatre of Action's final production, of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, in Toronto in 1940.

Tea Leaf Green

The album is framed by "The Garden (Parts I and II)," components of an evolving song cycle spread over multiple albums, and finds Garrod entrenched in a lyrical romanticism touching on the folk spirit of Woody Guthrie and an American, specifically Californian, mythology charted by authors such as John Steinbeck.

The Well-Spoken Thesaurus

In "Rhetorical Form and Design," Heehler serves up 17 lessons from such writers and speakers as T.S. Eliot, Margaret Atwood, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Barack Obama, Martin Luther King Jr., and Cintra Wilson.

The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield

Mansfield was groomed as a replacement for Marilyn Monroe and was quickly cast in movies like The Girl Can't Help It (1956), the film version of John Steinbeck's The Wayward Bus (1957), the film version of her Broadway hit Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957); and the film version of the Broadway play, Kiss Them for Me (1957).


Aharon Amir

Amir translated over 300 books into Hebrew, including English and French classics by Melville, Charles Dickens, Camus, Lewis Carroll, Joseph Conrad and Virginia Woolf, Edgar Allan Poe, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Emily Brontë and O. Henry.

Amerika Haus Berlin

Many prominent guests to the city made stops to this exhibition, including actor James Stewart (July 2, 1962), author John Steinbeck (December 13, 1963), and politicians Robert Kennedy (Spring 1962), Heinrich Lübke (February 3, 1963), and Richard Nixon (July 23, 1963).

Cup of Gold

Cup of Gold: A life of Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer, with Occasional Reference to History (1929) was John Steinbeck's first novel, a work of historical fiction based loosely on the life and death of privateer Henry Morgan.

Ella Winter

Two years later, they settled in Carmel, California, where their friends and neighbors included photographer Edward Weston, poet Robinson Jeffers, philosopher/mythologist Joseph Campbell, dancer/choreographer Jean Erdman, nutritionist/author Adelle Davis, poet George Sterling, short story writer/poet Clark Ashton Smith, marine biologist/ecologist Ed Ricketts and novelists John Steinbeck and Henry Miller.

Gate Theatre Studio

Productions, several of which transferred to the West End following censorship troubles with the Lord Chamberlain, included Oscar Wilde's Salome (1931), Laurence Houseman's Victoria Regina (1935), Elsie Schauffler's Parnell (1936), Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour (1936), John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men (1939) and Reginald Beckwith's Boys in Brown (1940).

Goo-goos

In John Steinbeck's novella, Of Mice and Men, the worker Whit approves of a whore house that doesn't "let no goo-goos in neither."

Here's Where I Belong

Based on John Steinbeck's classic novel East of Eden, the allegorical tale centers on the Trasks and the Hamiltons, two families drawn to the rich farmlands of Salinas, California in the early 20th Century.

Jack Kerouac Alley

The alley is now known for its engraved Western and Chinese poems, including poets such as John Steinbeck, Maya Angelou, and Kerouac himself.

Jorge Icaza Coronel

Jorge Icaza and Huasipungo are often compared to John Steinbeck and his Grapes of Wrath from 1939, as both are works of social protest.

Joseph Coulson

Chronicling the lives of working-class people, The Vanishing Moon was a critical success, and Coulson’s prose, themes, and historical range drew comparisons with John Steinbeck, William Maxwell, and Russell Banks.

La Paz, Baja California Sur

La Paz is featured in the John Steinbeck novel The Pearl (1947) and mentioned extensively in his travelogue The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951).

Manaf Suleymanov

Mr. Suleymanov also translated from English to Azerbaijani literary works by Jack London, Somerset Maugham, O. Henry, John Steinbeck, Peter Abrahams and many others.

Maurice Coindreau

He is notable for having introduced many canonical American authors of the 20th century—such as William Faulkner, John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, and Ernest Hemingway—to the French-speaking public.

Coindreau also translated the works of Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, and John Steinbeck into French, helping to usher in the "Age of the American novel" in France.

Max Wagner

When he was 10 years old, his father was killed by rebels and the family moved to Salinas, California, where he met John Steinbeck, who became a lifelong friend.

McCall's

McCall's published fiction by such well-known authors as Alice Adams, Ray Bradbury, Gelett Burgess, Willa Cather, Jack Finney, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Barbara Garson, John Steinbeck, Tim O'Brien, Anne Tyler and Kurt Vonnegut.

Pastures of Plenty

Describing the travails and dignity of migrant workers in North America, it is evocative of the world described in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

Roman Charity

For a 20th-century fictional account of Roman Charity, see John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (1939).

Roy S. Simmonds

Roy S. Simmonds (September 16, 1925 – November 10, 2001) was an English literary scholar and critic best known for his biographies on John Steinbeck, William March and Edward O'Brien.

The New Timer

This appears to be a nod to one of the jobs the Joads took in John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath, which inspired the title (and the title song) of the album "The New Timer" comes from.

The Song of Solomon

She also highlights the willingness of the song's protagonist to "do anything" for her lover with the reference to the Rose of Sharon, from the Bible and the John Steinbeck novel The Grapes of Wrath.

Weltschmerz

John Steinbeck wrote about this feeling in The Winter of Our Discontent and referred to it as the Welshrats; and in East of Eden, Samuel Hamilton feels it after meeting Cathy Trask for the first time.

Woman's Home Companion

Among the contributors to the magazine were editor Gene Gauntier, and authors Temple Bailey, Ellis Parker Butler, Rachel Carson, Arthur Guiterman, Shirley Jackson, Anita Loos, Neysa McMein, Kathleen Norris, Sylvia Schur, John Steinbeck, Willa Cather, and P. G. Wodehouse.