Born:	20 September 1878 Baltimore, Maryland
Died:	25 November 1968 Bound Brook, New Jersey
Occupation(s):	Novelist, writer
Nationality:	American

Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) , was a prolific American author who wrote over 90 books in many genres and was widely considered one of the best investigative journalists of his era. Often advocating socialist views, he achieved considerable popularity in the first half of the Twentieth Century. He gained particular fame for his novel, The Jungle (1906), which dealt with conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry and caused a public uproar that partly contributed to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.

Biography

Upton Sinclair was born on September 20th, 1878 in Baltimore, Maryland and later moved to New York City. Upton married his first wife in 1900.

An early success was the Civil War novel Manassas, written in 1903 and published a year later. Originally projected as the opening book of a trilogy, the success of The Jungle caused him to drop his plans, although he did revise Manassas decades later by "moderating some of the exuberance of the earlier version" ^{[citation needed]}. The Jungle brought to light many major issues in America such as poverty and other social wrongs.

Sinclair established a socialist commune called Helicon Hall Colony in 1906 with proceeds from his novel The Jungle. One of those who joined was the novelist and playwright Sinclair Lewis, who worked there as a janitor.

Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

Sinclair made several bids for national office. His first was in 1906, the Socialist Party of America sponsored his candidacy for Congress in New Jersey. He lost with just over 3% of the votes.^{[1] [2]}

The colony burned down in 1907, apparently from arson. After the famed fire of Helicon Hall, he moved to Arden, Delaware where many Georgist, Socialist, and Communist "Free Thinkers" lived including Mother Bloor's son Hamilton "Buzz" Ware. Some say that he worked in a tree house behind his home during these years.

Around 1911, Sinclair's wife ran off with the Poet Harry Kemp (later known as the Dunes Poet of Provincetown, Massachusetts). Within a few years Sinclair moved to Pasadena, California, where he founded the state's chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in the 1920s. Sinclair went on to run unsuccessfully for Congress twice on the Socialist ticket: in 1920 for the House of Representatives, and in 1922 for the Senate.^[3]

Sinclair's 1928 book Boston created controversy by proclaiming the innocence of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, anarchists who were accused of a murder-robbery in that city. Sinclair faced what he would later call "the most difficult ethical problem of my life," when he was told in confidence by Sacco and Vanzetti's former attorney Fred Moore that they were guilty and how their alibis were supposedly arranged.^[4] However, in the letter revealing that discussion with Moore, Sinclair also wrote, "I had heard that Moore was using drugs. I knew that he had parted from the defense committee after the bitterest of quarrels … Moore admitted to me that the men themselves had never admitted their guilt to him." Although the two men were ultimately executed, this episode has been used by some to claim that Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty and that Sinclair knew that when he wrote his novel, however this account has been disputed by Sinclair biographer Greg Mitchell.

In 1934 Sinclair made his most successful run for office, this time as a Democrat. Sinclair's platform for the California gubernatorial race of 1934, known as EPIC (End Poverty in California), galvanized the support of the Democratic Party, and Sinclair gained its nomination. Conservatives in California were themselves galvanized by this, as they saw it as an attempted Communist takeover of their state and used massive political propaganda portraying Sinclair as a Communist, even as he was being portrayed by American and Soviet Communists as a capitalist following the [citation needed]

Sinclair was defeated by Frank F. Merriam in the election and largely abandoned EPIC and politics to return to writing. However, the race of 1934 would become known as the first race to use modern campaign techniques like motion pictures.

Of his gubernatorial bids, Sinclair remarked in 1951: "The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to 'End Poverty in California' I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to out-flank them."[5]

Sinclair was married two more times. Later in his life he moved to Buckeye, Arizona, before moving to Bound Brook, New Jersey near the end of his life.

He took an interest in psychic phenomena and experimented with telepathy, writing a book titled Mental Radio, published in 1930.

His papers, photographs, and first editions of most of his books are found at the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.

The Upton Sinclair House in Monrovia, California, is now a National Historic Monument.

Political and social activism

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Sinclair believed that the main point of The Jungle was lost on the public, overshadowed by his descriptions of the unhealthy conditions in packing plants. The public health concerns dealt with in The Jungle are actually far less significant than the human tragedy lived by his main character and other workers in the plants. His main goal for the book was to demonstrate the inhumane conditions of the wage earner under capitalism, not to inspire public health reforms in how the packing was done. Indeed, Sinclair lamented the effect of his book and the public uproar that resulted: "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." ^{[citation needed]} Still, the fame and fortune he gained from publishing The Jungle enabled him to write books on almost every issue of social injustice in the Twentieth Century.

Sinclair is well-known for his principle: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." which has been quoted in many political books, essays, articles, and other forms of media, including Al Gore's 2006 film, An Inconvenient Truth.

He was also firmly in favor of prohibition, most obviously in his novel The Wet Parade, which tells the story of a prohibition agent from a pro-Dry slant.

The Lanny Budd series

Between 1940 and 1953 Sinclair wrote 11 novels about an American named Lanny Budd that, read in sequence, detailed much of the political history of the Western world in the first half of the twentieth century. Almost totally forgotten today, they were all bestsellers upon publication and were published in 21 countries. The third book in the series, Dragon's Teeth, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1943.

Long out of print, the Lanny Budd series have recently been re-issued by Simon Publications. For technical reasons, each original volume is issued in two parts, forming a 22-volume set.

Sinclair in culture

In Sinclair Lewis' novel It Can't Happen Here, Upton Sinclair is depicted as an eccentric and a supporter of fascism out of opportunistic motives, who is rewarded for his support of an American fascist government by being made ambassador to Great Britain.

Sinclair is featured in Harry Turtledove's American Empire trilogy as the Socialist Party winner of the 1920 and 1924 United States presidential elections.

Sinclair is featured as one of the main characters in Chris Bachelder's satirical fictional book 'U.S.!: a Novel'. Sinclair is the frequently assassinated and resurrected personification of the contemporary failings of the American-left and portrayed as an ineffectual and out-of-touch reformer always trying to implement American Socialism.

His 1937 novel, The Gnomobile, was the basis of a Disney musical motion picture in 1967 titled The Gnome-Mobile.

Works

• Courtmartialed - 1898
• Saved By the Enemy - 1898
• The Fighting Squadron - 1898
• A Prisoner of Morro - 1898
• A Soldier Monk - 1898
• A Gauntlet of Fire - 1899
• Holding the Fort (story) - 1899
• A Soldier's Pledge - 1899
• Wolves of the Navy - 1899
• Springtime and Harvest - 1901
• The Journal of Arthur Stirling - 1903
• Off For West Point - 1903
• From Port to Port - 1903
• On Guard - 1903
• A Strange Cruise - 1903
• The West Point Rivals - 1903
• A West Point Treasure - 1903
• A Cadet's Honor - 1903
• Cliff, the Naval Cadet - 1903
• The Cruise of the Training Ship - 1903
• Prince Hagan - 1903
• Manassas - 1904
• A Captain of Industry - 1906
• The Jungle - 1906
• The Millennium (four-act drama) - 1907
• The Overman - 1907
• The Industrial Republic - 1907
• The Metropolis - 1908
• The Money Changers - 1908
• Samuel The Seeker - 1909
• Good Health and How We Won It - 1909
• The Machine (novel) - 1911
• King Coal - 1917
• The Profits of Religion - 1918
• Jimmie Higgins - 1919
• The Brass Check - 1919
• THE SPY - 1920
• The Goose-step A Study of American Education - 1923
• The Millennium (novel form) - 1924
• The Goslings - 1924
• Oil! - 1927
• Boston - 1928
• Mental Radio - 1930
• Roman Holiday - 1931
• American Outpost - 1932
• Upton Sinclair presents William Fox - 1933
• The Epic Plan for California - 1934
• I, Candidate For Governor: And How I Got Licked. - 1935
• Co-op: a Novel of Living Together - 1936
• No Pasaran!: a Novel of the Battle of Madrid - 1937
• The Gnomobile"- 1937
• The Flivver King - 1937
• Little Steel- 1938
• World's End - 1940
• Between Two Worlds - 1941
• Dragon's Teeth - 1942
• Wide is the Gate - 1943
• Presidential Agent - 1944
• Dragon Harvest - 1945
• A World to Win - 1946
• Presidential Mission - 1947
• One Clear Call - 1948
• O Shepherd, Speak! - 1949
• Schenk Stefan! - 1951
• The Return of Lanny Budd - 1953
• The Cup of Fury - 1956
• What Didymus Did - UK 1954 / It Happened to Didymus - US 1958
• The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair - 1962 written with the help of Maeve Elizabeth Flynn III

References

1. ^ Upton Sinclair Biography Spartacus Educational
2. ^ Blackwell, John 1906: Rumble over The Jungle The Trentonian
3. ^ Sinclair, Upton October 13, 1934 End Poverty in California The EPIC Movement The Literary Digest
4. ^ January 28, 2006 Novelist's book about murder trial called into question Canadian Broadcasting Company
5. ^ United States Socialism Spartacus Educational