On May 6, 1940, John Steinbeck was awarded the Pulitzer Prize
for his novel The Grapes of Wrath.

The book traces the fictional Joad family of Oklahoma as they
lose their family farm and move to California in search of a
better life. 

One of Steinbeck’s most effective works of social commentary,
the novel also won the National Book Award.

John Ernst Steinbeck Jr.
(February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968)

Twenty-five-year-old Norman Mailer’s first novel, The Naked and
the Dead, was published on May 4, 1948. The book is critically
acclaimed and widely considered one of the best novels to
come out of World War II.

Norman Kingsley Mailer (1923 – 20007)

Atlanta magazine writer Margaret Mitchell (above) earned the
Pulitzer Prize in Novels for her breathtaking work of historical
fiction, "Gone with the Wind," on this day in history, May 3, 1937.

"Gone with the Wind," Mitchell’s 1,000-page Civil War saga, is
one of the world’s most successful novels. Even today, it enjoys
a global following.

Boris Pasternak’s romantic novel, Doctor Zhivago is published
in the United States on September 5, 1958. The book was banned
in the Soviet Union, but still won the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1958.

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak
(29 January] 1890 – 30 May 1960)

On July 11, 1960, the 34-year-old novelist Nelle Harper Lee
published her first novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.

The book was instantly successful. In the United States, it
is widely read in high schools and middle schools. To Kill
a Mockingbird has become a classic of modern American
literature, winning the Pulitzer Prize, was translated into 
some 40 languages and has sold more than 40 million
copies.

Nelle Harper Lee (April 28, 1926 – February 19, 2016)