Upton sinclair biography facts recording school

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 Although many of his later works and bids for political office were unsuccessful, Sinclair earned a Pulitzer Prize in for Dragon's Teeth.

Sinclair was born in a small row house in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 20, 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.

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By this time, Sinclair had already begun to develop a keen intellect and was a voracious reader, consuming the works of Shakespeare and Percy Bysshe Shelley at every waking moment. After graduating in , he enrolled at Columbia University to continue his studies and, using a pseudonym, wrote dime novels to support himself. 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 , he also began a family, marrying Meta Fuller, with whom he would have a son, David, the following year. 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. 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 the novel was finally released by Doubleday to great public acclaim—and shock.

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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. 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 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 and King Coal , and the education critique The Goose-Step