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"...an live off the fatta the lan..."
| 1902 | John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. is born in Salinas, California |
| 1919 | Graduates from Salinas High School |
| 1925 | Goes on to study English literature at Stanford University near Palo Alto, leaving without a degree in 1925 |
| 1925 | Moves to New York, taking odd jobs and trying to get published |
| 1928 | Returns to California and works as a tour guide and caretaker at Lake Tahoe, where he meets Carol Henning, his first wife |
| 1928-1930 | Steinbeck and Carol move back to Pacific Grove, California, to a cottage owned by his father. The elder Steinbecks gave John free housing, paper for his manuscripts, and from 1928, loans that allowed him to write without looking for work. During the Great Depression, Steinbeck bought a small boat, and later claimed that he was able to live on the fish and crabs that he gathered from the sea, and fresh vegetables from his garden and local farms. When those sources failed, Steinbeck and his wife accepted welfare, and on rare occasions, stole bacon from the local produce market. Whatever food they had, they shared with their friends. |
| 1929 | Cup of Gold (novel) |
| 1930 | Marries Carol Hennig in Los Angeles, where, with friends, he attempts to make money by manufacturing plaster mannequins |
| 1930 | Meets the marine biologist Ed Ricketts, who became a close friend and mentor to Steinbeck during the following decade, teaching him a great deal about philosophy and biology. Ricketts was an inspiration behind some of Steinbeck's characters |
| 1930 | Writes a werewolf murder mystery, Murder at Full Moon, that has never been published because the author himself considered it unworthy of publication |
| 1932 | The Pastures of Heaven (a collection of short stories) |
| 1933 | Writes to a friend on Salinas: "I think I would like to write the story of this whole valley" |
| 1933 | The Red Pony (novella) |
| 1933 | To a God Unknown (novel) |
| 1935 | Tortilla Flat (novel) |
| 1935 | Joins the League of American Writers, a Communist organization |
| 1936 | In Dubious Battle (novel) |
| 1936 | The Harvest Gypsies (nonfiction) |
| 1937 | Of Mice and Men (novella) |
| 1937 | Of Mice and Men (play) |
| 1938 | The Long Valley (a collection of short stories) |
| 1938 | Their Blood is Strong (nonfiction) |
| 1939 | The Grapes of Wrath (novel) |
| 1939 | Of Mice and Men (film) directed by Lewis Milestone, featuring Burgess Meredith, Lon Chaney, Jr., and Betty Field |
| 1939 | The Grapes of Wrath is named the best-selling book of 1939 according to The New York Times |
| 1939 | The Kern County Board of Supervisors bans the book from the county's publicly funded schools and libraries in August 1939, claiming the book obscene and misrepresenting conditions in the county. This ban lasts until January 1941 |
| 1939 | Signs a letter with some other writers in support of the Soviet invasion of Finland and the Soviet-established puppet government |
| 1940 | The Grapes of Wrath (film) directed by John Ford, featuring Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell and John Carradine |
| 1940 | By February 1940, 430,000 copies of The Grapes of Wrath had been printed |
| 1940 | The Grapes of Wrath wins the National Book Award, favorite fiction book of 1939, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association |
| 1940 | The Grapes of Wrath wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction |
| 1941 | The Forgotten Village (screenplay, film) - directed by Alexander Hammid and Herbert Kline, narrated by Burgess Meredith, music by Hanns Eisler |
| 1941 | Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research (nonfiction) |
| 1941 | Marriage to Carol ends in divorce |
| 1942 | The Moon Is Down (novel) |
| 1942 | Tortilla Flat (film) directed by Victor Fleming, featuring Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr and John Garfield |
| 1942 | Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team (nonfiction) |
| 1942 | Marries Gwyndolyn "Gwyn" Conger |
| 1942 | In a letter to United States Attorney General Francis Biddle, John Steinbeck writes: "Do you suppose you could ask Edgar's boys to stop stepping on my heels? They think I am an enemy alien. It is getting tiresome," referring to frequent investigations and annual audits by the FBI and the IRS on behalf of President J. Edgar Hoover |
| 1943 | The Moon Is Down (film) directed by Irving Pichel, featuring Lee J. Cobb and Sir Cedric Hardwicke |
| 1943 | Serves as a World War II war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune and works with the Office of Strategic Services (predecessor of the CIA) |
| 1944 | Lifeboat (film) directed by Alfred Hitchcock, featuring Tallulah Bankhead, Hume Cronyn, and John Hodiak. He felt that the final version of the film had racist undertones and requested that his name be removed from the credits |
| 1944 | A Medal for Benny (film) directed by Irving Pichel, featuring Dorothy Lamour and Arturo de Cordova |
| 1944 | First son Thomas ("Thom") Myles Steinbeck is born |
| 1945 | Cannery Row (novel) |
| 1945 | Receives the King Haakon VII Freedom Cross for his literary contributions to the Norwegian resistance movement |
| 1945 | The story of "The Pearl" first appears in the December 1945 issue of Woman's Home Companion magazine as "The Pearl of the World" |
| 1946 | Second son John Steinbeck IV is born |
| 1947 | The Wayward Bus (novel) |
| 1947 | The Pearl (novella) |
| 1947 | La Perla (The Pearl, Mexico; film) directed by Emilio Fernández, featuring Pedro Armendáriz and María Elena Marqués |
| 1947 | Travels to the Soviet Union for the first time with the photographer Robert Capa |
| 1948 | A Russian Journal (nonfiction) |
| 1948 | Is elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters |
| 1948 | Ed Ricketts dies after an accident |
| 1948 | Marriage to Gwyn ends in divorce in 1948 |
| 1948 | After loosing his best friend and then his wife, John is depressed |
| 1949 | The Red Pony (film) directed by Lewis Milestone, featuring Myrna Loy, Robert Mitchum, and Louis Calhern |
| 1949 | The Red Pony (film score) |
| 1949 | John meets stage-manager Elaine Scott at a restaurant in Carmel, California |
| 1950 | Burning Bright (novella) |
| 1950 | John marries Elaine Scott. She will remain his wife until his death. |
| 1951 | The Log from the Sea of Cortez (nonfiction) |
| 1952 | East of Eden (novel) |
| This is Steinbeck's longest, epic novel about the Salinas Valley. According to his third wife, Elaine, he considered it his magnum opus, his greatest novel. | |
| 1952 | Viva Zapata! (film) directed by Elia Kazan, featuring Marlon Brando, Anthony Quinn and Jean Peters |
| 1952 | Begins working for the CIA |
| 1953 | Writes that he considered cartoonist Al Capp, creator of the satirical Li'l Abner, "possibly the best writer in the world today" |
| 1954 | Sweet Thursday (novel) |
| 1955 | East of Eden (film) directed by Elia Kazan, featuring James Dean, Julie Harris, Jo Van Fleet, and Raymond Massey |
| 1957 | The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication (novel) |
| 1957 | The Wayward Bus (film) directed by Victor Vicas, featuring Rick Jason, Jayne Mansfield, and Joan Collins |
| 1957 | Takes a personal and professional risk by supporting the playwright Arthur Miller when he refused to name names in the House Un-American Activities Committee trials. Steinbeck called the period one of the "strangest and most frightening times a government and people have ever faced" |
| 1958 | Once There Was a War (nonfiction) |
| 1958 | The street that Steinbeck described as "Cannery Row" in the novel, once named Ocean View Avenue, was renamed Cannery Row in honor of the novel. |
| 1959 | Steinbeck and his third wife Elaine rent a cottage in the hamlet of Discove, Redlynch, near Bruton in Somerset, England, while Steinbeck researched his retelling of the Arthurian legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. He later recalled this time being the happiest time with Elaine. |
| 1961 | The Winter of Our Discontent (novel) |
| 1961 | Flight (film) featuring Efrain Ramírez and Arnelia Cortez |
| 1962 | Travels with Charley: In Search of America (nonfiction) |
| 1962 | Ikimize bir dünya (Of Mice and Men, Turkey; film) |
| 1962 | John Steinbeck is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature |
| 1962 | At his own first Nobel Prize press conference he was asked his favorite authors and works and replied: "Hemingway's short stories and nearly everything Faulkner wrote |
| 1962 | Begins acting as friend and mentor to the young writer and naturalist Jack Rudloe, who was trying to establish his own biological supply company, now Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in Florida. Their correspondence continued until Steinbeck's death |
| 1963 | Visits the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic at the behest of John Kennedy. During his visit he sat for a rare portrait by painter Martiros Saryan and visited Geghard Monastery |
| 1964 | In September 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded Steinbeck the Presidential Medal of Freedom |
| 1966 | America and Americans (nonfiction) |
| 1966 | Travels to Tel Aviv to visit the site of Mount Hope, a farm community established in Israel by his grandfather, whose brother, Friedrich Großsteinbeck, was murdered by Arab marauders in 1858 in what became known as the Outrages at Jaffa |
| 1967 | Goes to Vietnam, at the behest of Newsday magazine, to report on the war |
| 1968 | Dies in New York City on December 20, 1968, during the 1968 flu pandemic of heart disease and congestive heart failure |
| 1969 | Of Mice and Men (1969 opera) |
| 1969 | Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters (nonfiction) |
| 1972 | Topoli (Of Mice and Men, Iran; film) |
| 1973 | The Red Pony (film) |
| 1975 | Viva Zapata! (film) |
| 1975 | Steinbeck: A Life in Letters (nonfiction) |
| 1976 | The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (fiction). |
| The unfinished manuscript was published after John's death. | |
| 1979 | On February 27, 1979 (the 77th anniversary of the writer's birth), the United States Postal Service issued a stamp featuring Steinbeck, starting the Postal Service's Literary Arts series honoring American writers |
| 1981 | East of Eden (miniseries) |
| 1982 | Cannery Row (film) directed by David S. Ward, featuring Nick Nolte and Debra Winger |
| 1983 | The Winter of Our Discontent (film) |
| 1983 | The Steinbeck Center Foundation is founded |
| 1988 | The Grapes of Wrath (play) |
| 1989 | Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath (nonfiction) |
| 1992 | Of Mice and Men (film) directed by Gary Sinise and starring John Malkovich and Gary Sinise |
| 1995 | Steinbeck is inducted in to the DeMolay International all of Fame |
| 1996 | John Steinbeck Award first presented to Bruce Springsteen |
| 1998 | The National Steinbeck Center is finished and opened to the public on June 27, 1998 |
| 2002 | John Steinbeck Award for Fiction is founded - an annual short-story competition by Reed Magazine of San José State University |
| 2003 | A school board in Mississippi bans The Grapes of Wrath on the grounds of profanity |
| 2007 | The Grapes of Wrath (opera) |
| 2007 | On December 5, 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Steinbeck into the California Hall of Fame, located at the California Museum for History, Women and the Arts. His son, author Thomas Steinbeck, accepted the award on his behalf. |
| 2012 | Best Laid Plans (film) |
| 2012 | Steinbeck in Vietnam: Dispatches from the War (nonfiction) |
| 2013 | His granddaughter sells footage of John's visit of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic filmed by Rafael Aramyan |
| 2014 | To commemorate the 112th anniversary of Steinbeck's birthday on February 27, 2014, Google displays an interactive doodle utilizing animation which included illustrations portraying scenes and quotes from several novels by the author |
| 2016 | In Dubious Battle (film) directed by James Franco and featuring Franco, Nat Wolff and Selena Gomez |
| 2016 | Steinbeck and his friend Ed Ricketts appear as fictionalized characters in the 2016 novel, Monterey Bay about the founding of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, by Lindsay Hatton (Penguin Press) |
| 2019 | The Sag Harbor town board approves the creation of the John Steinbeck Waterfront Park across from the iconic town windmill |
Steinbeck’s books have been published
in more than 45 languages.
For more information about John Steinbeck, visit The National Steinbeck Center page or his Wikipedia entry