A “background never stated”: Mice, Snakes, Dogs, and Rabbits in Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men

BARBARA A. HEAVILIN is editor in chief of Steinbeck Review and has written or edited several books and numerous articles on John Steinbeck. She has given conference presentations at the University of Westminster, London; the Oxford Round Table, Oxford University; San José State University, California; Edinburgh University, Scotland; Notre Dame University, Indiana; and numerous other venues, on topics ranging from John Steinbeck to the architectonics of John Milton's Paradise Lost and Christopher Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral, presented at University of London. She is Steinbeck bibliographer for Oxford University Press and co-editor with Susan Shillinglaw of “something entirely new”: Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, to be published by the University of Alabama Press.