Upton Sinclair

Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. was an American writer who wrote nearly 100 books and other works in several genres. Sinclair’s work was well known and popular in the first half of the 20th century, and he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943. In 1906, Sinclair acquired particular fame for his classic muck-raking novel The Jungle, which exposed labor and sanitary conditions in the U.S. meatpacking industry. Sinclair was an outspoken socialist and ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a nominee from the Socialist Party.

About Upton Sinclair in brief

Summary Upton SinclairUpton Beall Sinclair Jr. was an American writer who wrote nearly 100 books and other works in several genres. Sinclair’s work was well known and popular in the first half of the 20th century, and he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943. In 1906, Sinclair acquired particular fame for his classic muck-raking novel The Jungle, which exposed labor and sanitary conditions in the U.S. meatpacking industry. 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, running under the banner of the End Poverty in California campaign, but was defeated in the 1934 elections. He is also well remembered for the line: \”It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.’” Sinclair’s novels describe the world of industrialized America from both the working man’s and the industrialist’s points of view. Many of his novels can be read as historical works. Sinclair wrote jokes, magazine articles, and pulp magazines in boys’ magazines, and paid to pay for his tuition at New York City College before his 15th birthday. He would sign up for a variety of subjects, including Spanish, German and French, and then drop it for a class. He later studied law at Columbia University, but he was more interested in writing writing.

He died in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 80. He had a son, Upton Sinclair III, who was born in 1892 in Baltimore, Maryland, and grew up in New York. His father was a liquor salesman; his mother was a strict Episcopalian who disliked alcohol, tea, and coffee. Sinclair had wealthy maternal grandparents with whom he often stayed. This gave him insight into how both the rich and the poor lived during the late 19th century. His parents were of English ancestry, Paternal Grandparents were Scottish, and all of his ancestors emigrated to America from Great Britain in the late 1600s and early 1700s. As he was growing up, Upton’s family moved frequently, as his father was not successful in his career. In 1888, the family moved to New York, where his father sold shoes. His mother’s family was very affluent: her parents were very prosperous in Baltimore,. and her sister married a millionaire. King Coal confronts John D. Rockefeller Jr., and his role in the 1914 Ludlow Massacre in the coal fields of Colorado. The Flivver King describes the rise of Henry Ford, his company’s Sociological Department, and his decline into antisemitism as publisher of The Dearborn Independent. The Coal War, Oil!, and The Flvver King describe the working conditions of the coal, oil, and auto industries at the time. Sinclair died at age 80 in Los Angeles, California on December 28, 1962. He left behind a wife and three children.