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Robert DeMott

Robert DeMott is an American Steinbeck scholar and retired Ohio University professor. He edited Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath journals and wrote the introduction and notes for the Penguin Classics edition of the novel.

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About Robert DeMott

Robert DeMott, born in 1943 in New Canaan, Connecticut, is an American critic and editor who taught at Ohio University in Athens from 1969 until he retired fully in 2013. He held the Edwin and Ruth Kennedy Distinguished Professorship in English from 1998 and is now professor emeritus.

His subject is John Steinbeck, and he approaches him partly as an archivist. Steinbeck's Reading (1984) reconstructs the books Steinbeck owned and borrowed. Working Days (1989) is DeMott's annotated edition of the journal Steinbeck kept while he wrote The Grapes of Wrath, a record of doubt and stubbornness more than of triumph. Steinbeck's Typewriter (1996) collects DeMott's essays on the writer's craft. His later book, Steinbeck's Imaginarium (University of New Mexico Press, 2022), mixes scholarship with memoir and looks at the fishing scenes in Steinbeck's work through the eyes of a lifelong angler.

Working Days was a New York Times Notable Book for 1989, Steinbeck's Typewriter shared the 1998 Nancy Dasher Book Award, and the National Steinbeck Center gave him its Trustees Award in 2006. He also wrote the introductions and notes for Penguin Classics editions of The Grapes of Wrath, To a God Unknown and Sweet Thursday.

On WebToTell his name is attached to the Penguin Classics edition of The Grapes of Wrath. The novel is Steinbeck's; DeMott supplies the introduction and notes. Read the story first, then the introduction if you want to know how it was made. If the book grips you, Working Days is the natural next step.

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The Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck's 1939 novel follows the Joads, an Oklahoma tenant-farming family pushed off their land during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. They travel west on Route 66 toward California, hoping for work and dignity. They find low wages, hostile locals, labor camps and organized efforts to keep migrant workers divided and poor. Steinbeck alternates the family's story with wider chapters about the land, the banks, the roads and the economy. The result is both an intimate family drama and a sweeping protest against hunger amid plenty. It won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize, helped lead to Steinbeck's 1962 Nobel Prize, and remains one of the classic novels to read for anyone curious about American history and social conscience.

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