John Steinbeck, To a God Unknown

Michael J. Meyer (DePaul University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1933

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

Recommended Reading

The idea for

To a God Unknown

was borrowed from the plot line of a play written by Webster Street, Steinbeck's close friend at Stanford University. The initial draft was begun in the fall and winter of 1928 and originally had the same title as Street's play:

The Green Lady

. However, after writing over 100 pages, Steinbeck abandoned the project and decided to approach it on his own and not to list his friend as the co-author.

Later however, after composing some short stories, he returned to the project in December of the same year, making significant changes in both the character names and the location of the setting. The manuscript, now titled To The Unknown (later an Unknown) God, also presented different conflicts. Though he initially submitted the novel in 1930 to his first publisher,

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2261 words

Citation: Meyer, Michael J.. "To a God Unknown". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 December 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8373, accessed 05 May 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article

Save this article