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John Steinbeck (Identities and Issues in Literature)

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John Steinbeck’s upbringing and experiences in Salinas, California, generated an intense devotion to the less fortunate, especially migrant workers of the Midwestern and Western United States. Steinbeck’s early reading helped generate the idealism evident throughout his work. The Bible was the primary influence, followed closely by Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (c. 1469); Steinbeck was given a copy of Malory’s book at age nine. The Bible provided...

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