The Grapes of Wrath came out of the time Steinbeck was working on Of Mice and Men, when he also accepted work writing for the San Francisco News. Steinbeck was assigned a story to cover migrant workers who swelled the California population at seasonal harvest times. Steinbeck decided to travel incognito and observe the living conditions and the violence of the migrant workers' lives. He published a series of articles in 1936 titled "The Harvest Gypsies." This experience moved his sense of compassion and stirred up his concern for social justice.
In preparation for writing a novel, Steinbeck went to Oklahoma, joined some migrants, and traveled with them to California. Once in California, he stayed with these migrants in "Hoovervilles," joining them in their search for work and observing firsthand their living conditions. A major publishing event of 1939, The Grapes of Wrath became a best seller and was the eighth ranking book of 1940 according to Publishers' Weekly. It was estimated that over half a million copies of the original printing were sold. The novel was translated into foreign editions and won an American Bookseller's award as well as the Pulitzer Prize for the best novel of the year. Steinbeck was also elected to membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In a year of great motion pictures, the film version of The Grapes of Wrath competed with Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. The strong movie censorship of the times, however, took a lot of the bite out of Steinbeck's criticism of social injustices.
