The Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
Typescript for The Grapes of Wrath
with copy-editing marks, 1939
Manuscript Division
Gift of Frank J. Hogan, 1941 (61A.8)

John Steinbeck won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, where he documents a national tragedy by tracing one family's exodus from Oklahoma because of the great "dust bowl" disaster. The naturalistic style delivered a message that shocked the nation and exposed the exploited masses of the Depression Era. Steinbeck was instrumental in changing laws to benefit the working classes. For this and subsequent novels, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.