upton sinclair biography pdf

Upton Sinclair

(1878-1968)

Who Was Upton Sinclair?

Upton Sinclair was an American writer whose involvement with socialism led to a writing assignment about the plight of workers in the meatpacking industry, eventually resulting in the best-selling novel The Jungle (1906). Although many of his later works and bids for political office were unsuccessful, Sinclair earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1943 for Dragon's Teeth .

Sinclair was born in a small row house in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 20, 1878. From birth, he was exposed to dichotomies that would have a profound effect on his young mind and greatly influence his thinking later in life. The only child of an alcoholic liquor salesman and a puritanical, strong-willed mother, he was raised on the edge of poverty but was also exposed to the privileges of the upper class through visits with his mother’s wealthy family.

Upton Sinclair Books

Having completed his schooling at age 20, Sinclair made the decision to become a serious novelist while working as a freelance journalist to make ends meet. In 1900, he also began a family, marrying Meta Fuller, with whom he would have a son, David, the following year.

Though their marriage would ultimately prove to be an unhappy one, it did inspire Sinclair’s first novel, Springtime and Harvest (1901), which, after receiving numerous rejections, Sinclair published himself. Over the next few years, he would write several more novels—based on topics ranging from Wall Street to the Civil War to autobiography—but all were more or less failures.

'The Jungle'

Ultimately, it would be Sinclair’s political convictions that would lead to his first literary success and the one for which he is most known. The contempt he had developed for the upper class as a youth had led Sinclair to socialism in 1903, and in 1904 he was sent to Chicago by the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason to write an exposé on the mistreatment of workers in the meatpacking industry. After spending several weeks conducting undercover research on his subject matter, Sinclair threw himself into the manuscript that would become The Jungle .

Initially rejected by publishers, in 1906 the novel was finally released by Doubleday to great public acclaim—and shock. Despite Sinclair’s intention to reveal the plight of laborers at the meatpacking plants, his vivid descriptions of the cruelty to animals and unsanitary conditions there caused a great public outcry and ultimately changed the way people shopped for food.

Upon its release, Sinclair enlisted his fellow writer and friend Jack London to help publicize his book and assist in getting his message across to the masses. The Jungle became a massive bestseller and was translated into 17 languages within months of its release. Among its readers was President Theodore Roosevelt , who—despite his aversion to Sinclair’s politics—invited Sinclair to the White House and ordered an inspection of the meatpacking industry. As a result, the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act were both passed in 1906.

From Politics to Pulitzer

Fame and fortune would not derail Sinclair from his political convictions; in fact, they only served to deepen them and enable him to embark on personal projects such as Helicon Hall, a utopian co-op he constructed in New Jersey in 1906 with royalties received from The Jungle . The building burned down less than a year later, and Sinclair was forced to abandon his plans, suspecting that he had been targeted because of his socialist politics.

Sinclair published numerous works over the following decade, including the novels The Metropolis (1908) and King Coal (1917), and the education critique The Goose-Step (1923) . But the author’s persistent focus on ideology often did little to help sales, and most of his fiction during this period was commercially unsuccessful.

By the early 1920s, Sinclair had divorced Meta, remarried a woman named Mary Kimbrough and moved to Southern California, where he continued both his literary and political pursuits. He founded the California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, and as a candidate for the Socialist Party, he launched unsuccessful bids for Congress. His novels from this period fared far better than his political ventures, with 1927’s Oil! (about the Teapot Dome scandal) and 1928’s Boston (about the Sacco and Vanzetti case) both receiving favorable reviews. Eighty years after it appeared in print, Oil! would be made into the Academy Award-winning film There Will Be Blood.

With the onset of the Great Depression , Sinclair intensified his political activities. He organized the End Poverty in California (EPIC) movement, a public-works program that was the basis for his 1934 run as the Democratic Party’s candidate for governor of California. Despite vehement opposition from the political establishment, both within the Democratic Party and beyond, Sinclair was defeated by a relatively small margin, taking 37 percent of the vote in a three-candidate race. He celebrated his loss by publishing a work titled I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked in 1935 .

In 1940, Sinclair published the historical novel World’s End. It was first of what would be 11 books in the “Lanny Budd” series, named for the protagonist who somehow manages to be present at all of the most significant world events in the early 20th century. The 1942 installment in the series, Dragon’s Teeth , which explores the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism in Germany, earned Sinclair the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the following year.

Later Years and Death

Sinclair continued his tireless and prolific output into the second half of the century, but by the early 1960s, he had turned his attention to Mary, who was in poor health following a stroke. She passed away in 1961, and two years later, at age 83, Sinclair married for a third time, to Mary Willis.

Several years later, his own health caused him to move to a nursing home in Bound Brook, New Jersey. He died on November 25, 1968, at the age of 90, having written more than 90 books, 30 plays and countless other works of journalism.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Upton Sinclair
• Birth Year: 1878
• Birth date: September 20, 1878
• Birth State: Maryland
• Birth City: Baltimore
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Upton Sinclair was an activist writer whose works, including 'The Jungle' and 'Boston,' often uncovered social injustices.
• Business and Industry
• Civil Rights
• Fiction and Poetry
• Journalism and Nonfiction
• Astrological Sign: Virgo
• College of the City of New York
• Columbia University
• Death Year: 1968
• Death date: November 25, 1968
• Death State: New Jersey
• Death City: Bound Brook
• Death Country: United States

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Upton Sinclair Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/upton-sinclair
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: April 20, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
• [With 'The Jungle'] I aimed at the public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach.
• All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescapably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda.
• To do that would mean, not merely to be defeated, but to acknowledge defeat- and the difference between these two things is what keeps the world going.

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• World Biography

Upton Sinclair Biography

Born: September 20, 1878 Baltimore, Maryland Died: November 25, 1968 Bound Brook, New Jersey American writer

Upton Sinclair, American novelist and political writer, was one of the most important muckrakers (writers who search out and reveal improper conduct in politics and business) of the 1900s. His novel The Jungle helped improve working conditions in the meat-packing industry.

Early life and education

Upton Beale Sinclair Jr. was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 20, 1878. He was the only child of Upton Beall Sinclair and Priscilla Harden. His father worked at different times selling liquor, hats, and men's clothes. He also struggled with poverty and a drinking problem. Young Upton was a shy, thoughtful boy who taught himself to read at age five. The family moved to New York City when Upton was ten, and at fourteen he entered New York City College. He graduated in 1897 and went to Columbia University to study law, but instead became more interested in politics and literature. He never earned a law degree. Through these years he supported himself by writing for adventure-story magazines. While attending Columbia he wrote eight thousand words a day. He also continued to read a great deal—over one two-week Christmas break he read all of William Shakespeare's (1564–1616) works as well as all of John Milton's (1608–1674) poetry.

Becomes involved in politics

Sinclair moved to Quebec, Canada, in 1900. That same year he married Meta Fuller, with whom he had a son. His first novel, Springtime and Harvest (1901), was a modest success. Three more novels in the next four years failed to provide even a bare living. Sinclair became a member of the Socialist Party in 1902, and he was a Socialist candidate for Congress from New Jersey in 1906. (Socialists believe in a system in which there is no private property and all people own the means of production, such as factories and farms, as a group.)

Also in 1906 Sinclair's The Jungle, a novel exposing unfair labor practices and unsanitary conditions in the meat-packing factories of Chicago, Illinois, was a huge success. Sinclair had spent seven weeks observing the operations of a meat-packing plant before writing the book. The Jungle 's protest about the problems of laborers and the socialist solutions it proposed caused a public outcry. President Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) invited Sinclair to discuss packing-house conditions, and a congressional investigation led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act.

Documents personal life

Sinclair divorced his first wife in 1913. The autobiographical (based on his own life) novel Love's Pilgrimage (1911) treats his marriage and the birth of his child with an honesty that shocked some reviewers. Sinclair married Mary Craig Kimbrough in 1913. Sylvia and Sylvia's Marriage, a massive two-part story, called for sexual enlightenment (freedom from ignorance and misinformation).

King Coal (1917), based on a coal strike of 1914 and 1915, returned to labor protest and socialistic comment. However, in 1917 Sinclair left the Socialist Party to support President Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924). He returned to the socialist camp when Wilson supported intervention in the Soviet Union. In California Sinclair ran on the Socialist ticket for Congress (1920), for the Senate (1922), and for governor (1926 and 1930).

Continues stirring things up

Sinclair continued his writings on political and reform issues. Oil! (1927) dealt with dishonesty in President Warren G. Harding's (1865–1923) administration. Boston (1928), a novel about the Sacco-Vanzetti case (in which two Italian men, believed by many to have been innocent, were convicted and executed for having committed a murder during a payroll robbery), brought to light much new material and demonstrated the constructive research that always lay beneath Sinclair's protest writings.

In 1933 Sinclair was persuaded to campaign seriously for governor of California. He called his program "End Poverty in California." His sensible presentation of Socialist ideas won him the Democratic nomination, but millions of dollars and a campaign based on lies and fear defeated him in the election.

World's End (1940) launched Sinclair's eleven-volume novel series that attempted to give an insider's view of the U.S. government between 1913 and 1949. One of the novels, Dragon's Teeth (1942), a study of the rise of Nazism (a German political movement of the 1930s whose followers scorned democracy and favored the destruction of all "inferior" non-Germans, especially Jewish people), won the Pulitzer Prize. Before his death on November 25, 1968, Sinclair had produced more than ninety books that earned at least $1 million, most of it contributed to socialist and reform causes.

For More Information

Harris, Leon A. Upton Sinclair, American Rebel. New York: Crowell, 1975.

Scott, Ivan. Upton Sinclair: The Forgotten Socialist. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1996.

Sinclair, Upton. Autobiography. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1962.

Sinclair, Upton. My Lifetime in Letters. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1960.

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Biography: upton sinclair.

Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American author who wrote nearly 100 books and other works across a number of genres. Sinclair’s work was well-known and popular in the first half of the twentieth century, and he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943.

In 1906, Sinclair acquired particular fame for his classic muckrakingnovel, The Jungle , which exposed conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Actand the Meat Inspection Act. In 1919, he published The Brass Check , a muckraking exposé of American journalism that publicized the issue of yellow journalism and the limitations of the “free press” in the United States. Four years after publication of The Brass Check , the first code of ethics for journalists was created. Time magazine called him “a man with every gift except humor and silence.” He is remembered for writing the famous line: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Sinclair was an outspoken socialist and ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a nominee from the Socialist Party. He was also the Democratic Party candidate for Governor of California during the Great Depression, but was defeated in the 1934 elections.

His novel based on the meatpacking industry in Chicago, The Jungle, was first published in serial form in the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason, from February 25, 1905 to November 4, 1905. It was published as a book by Doubleday in 1906.

Sinclair had spent about six months investigating the Chicago meatpacking industry for Appeal to Reason , work which inspired his novel. He intended to “set forth the breaking of human hearts by a system which exploits the labor of men and women for profit.” The novel featured Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant who works in a meat factory in Chicago, his teenage wife Ona Lukoszaite, and their extended family. Sinclair portrays their mistreatment by Rudkus’ employers and the wealthier elements of society. His descriptions of the unsanitary and inhumane conditions that workers suffered served to shock and galvanize readers. Jack London called Sinclair’s book “the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of wage slavery.” Domestic and foreign purchases of American meat fell by half.

Sinclair wrote in Cosmopolitan Magazine in October 1906 about The Jungle : “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”The novel brought public lobbying for Congressional legislation and government regulation of the industry, including passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act. At the time, President Theodore Roosevelt characterized Sinclair as a “crackpot”,   writing to William Allen White, “I have an utter contempt for him. He is hysterical, unbalanced, and untruthful. Three-fourths of the things he said were absolute falsehoods. For some of the remainder there was only a basis of truth.” After reading The Jungle, Roosevelt agreed with some of Sinclair’s conclusions but was opposed to legislation that he considered “socialist.” He said, “Radical action must be taken to do away with the efforts of arrogant and selfish greed on the part of the capitalist.”

View Upton Sinclair’s full biography on Wikipedia .

• Upton Sinclair. Provided by : Wikipedia. Located at : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Image of Upton Sinclair. Provided by : Time Magazine. Located at : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair#/media/File:Upton_Beall_Sinclair_Jr.jpg . License : Public Domain: No Known Copyright

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• Upton Sinclair: California Socialist, Celebrity Intellectual

In this Book

• Lauren Coodley
• Published by: University of Nebraska Press

Had Upton Sinclair not written a single book after The Jungle , he would still be famous. But Sinclair was a mere twenty-five years old when he wrote The Jungle , and over the next sixty-five years he wrote nearly eighty more books and won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He was also a filmmaker, labor activist, women’s rights advocate, and health pioneer on a grand scale. This new biography of Sinclair underscores his place in the American story as a social, political, and cultural force, a man who more than any other disrupted and documented his era in the name of social justice.

Upton Sinclair: California Socialist, Celebrity Intellectual shows us Sinclair engaged in one cause after another, some surprisingly relevant today—the Sacco-Vanzetti trial, the depredations of the oil industry, the wrongful imprisonment of the Wobblies, and the perils of unchecked capitalism and concentrated media. Throughout, Lauren Coodley provides a new perspective for looking at Sinclair’s prodigiously productive life. Coodley’s book reveals a consistent streak of feminism, both in Sinclair’s relationships with women—wives, friends, and activists—and in his interest in issues of housework and childcare, temperance and diet. This biography will forever alter our picture of this complicated, unconventional, often controversial man whose whole life was dedicated to helping people understand how society was run, by whom, and for whom.

Table of Contents

• Copyright Page
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• pp. xv-xviii
• 1. Southern Gentlemen Drank, 1878–1892
• 2. Making Real Men of Our Boys, 1893–1904
• 3. Good Health and How We Won It, 1905–1915
• 4. Singing Jailbirds, 1916–1927
• 5. How I Ran for Governor, 1928–1939
• pp. 101-132
• 6. World’s End, 1940–1949
• pp. 133-152
• 7. A Lifetime in Letters, 1950–1968
• pp. 153-170
• pp. 171-182
• pp. 183-186
• pp. 187-190
• pp. 191-228
• pp. 229-237

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Index : Upton Sinclair - The Jungle (1920 imprint).pdf

• Chapter III
• Chapter VII
• Chapter VIII
• Chapter XII
• Chapter XIII
• Chapter XIV
• Chapter XVI
• Chapter XVII
• Chapter XVIII
• Chapter XIX
• Chapter XXI
• Chapter XXII
• Chapter XXIII
• Chapter XXIV
• Chapter XXV
• Chapter XXVI
• Chapter XXVII
• Chapter XXVIII
• Chapter XXIX
• Chapter XXX
• Chapter XXXI

• Index Not-Proofread
• Index not transcluded
• Index pages of works originally in English

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