Of Mice and Men

Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of AmericaA's greatest writers and cultural figures. Over the next year, his many works published as black-spine Penguin Classics for the first time and will feature eye-catching, newly commissioned art.

Penguin Classics is proud to present these seminal works to a new generation of readersA-and to the many who revisit them again and again.

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While the powerlessness of the laboring class in a recurring theme in this classic work, Steinbeck narrows his focus, creating an intimate portrait of two men facing a world marked by petty tyranny, misunderstanding, jealousy, and callousness--a parable about commitment, loneliness, hope, and loss.

JOHN STEINBECK (1902-û1968) was born in Salinas, California. He worked as a laborer and a journalist, and in 1935, when he published Tortilla Flat, he achieved popular success and financial security. Steinbeck wrote more than twenty-five novels and won the Nobel Prize in 1962.
Robert DeMott is the Edwin and Ruth Kennedy Distinguished Professor at Ohio University and the author of Steinbeck-'s Typewriter, an award-winning book of critical essays.
Gary Scharnhorst is professor of English at the University of New Mexico. He is the editor of books by Bret Harte and John De Forest for Penguin Classics.