East of Eden, South of Frome
Exactly 50 years since the death of John Steinbeck, a small town in Somerset will remember him more vividly than most. The great American author, famous for Pulitzer Prize-winner The Grapes of Wrath and the 1952 epic East of Eden, grew up in Salinas, California. But, in 1959, he spent six months living in England with his third wife Elaine.
His aim was “to feel the past” and work on The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, a retelling of Arthurian legend that was published, unfinished and posthumously, in 1976.
The author came to know and understand the county of Somerset well. In a letter from the summer of 1959, he noted: “There’s a goodness here after travail. There’s something here that clears your eyes… It’s more than meadows and hedges – it’s much more than that. There
