This volume is the first to collect the critical responses of Steinbeck’s generation to his many fiction and nonfiction works, as they appeared from the late 1920s on. The articles trace the record of Steinbeck’s progress through the 1930s and go on to reflect his steady series of achievements through the 1960s, including his attainment of the Nobel Prize in 1962. These articles offer at last a means of seeing Steinbeck’s writings as they were perceived by his contemporaries, whose task it was first to evaluate and interpret them for an ever-growing readership.