John Steinbeck

American novelist — Nobel Prize in Literature 1962 — author of The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, and East of Eden — who created the most influential fiction about American labor and the Depression.

Creates the American proletarian novel — The Grapes of Wrath is the most politically effective novel in American history (directly influencing New Deal policy); its combination of documentary realism, Biblical allegory, and genuine sympathy for migrant workers established the template for socially engaged American fiction.