He was born in 1902, in Salinas, California, came from a family of moderate means. He worked his way through college at Stanford University but never graduated. His novels can all be classified as social novels dealing with the economic problems of rural labour. After he went o college, he moved to New York City, where he found work as a construction worker and newspaper reporter. He then scurried back to California, where he took a job as a caretaker in Lake Tahoe. It was during this time that he wrote his first novel, Cup of Gold, as well as met and married his first wife, Carol. Over the next decade, with Carol's support and paycheck, Steinbeck continued to pour himself into his writing. After the rough and earthy humour of Tortilla Flat, one of his first novels, he moved on to more serious fiction, often aggressive in its social criticism, in Doublis Battle, which deals with the strikes of the migratory fruit pickers on California plantations.