Upton Sinclair

American writer (1878–1968) Not to be confused with his contemporary, Sinclair Lewis, novelist and social critic.

Upton Sinclair
Sinclair in 1900
Born	Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (1878-09-20)September 20, 1878 Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Died	November 25, 1968(1968-11-25) (aged 90) Bound Brook, New Jersey, U.S.
Resting place	Rock Creek Cemetery
Education	City College of New York (BA) Columbia University
Occupations	Novelist writer journalist political activist politician
Notable work	The Jungle
Political party	Socialist (1902–1934) Democratic (1934–1968)
Spouses	Meta Fuller (m. 1900; div. 1911) Mary Craig Kimbrough (m. 1913; died 1961) Mary Elizabeth Willis (m. 1961; died 1967)
Relatives	Arthur Sinclair (great-grandfather) Wallis Simpson (cousin) Corinne Mustin (cousin)
Signature

Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American author, muckraker, and political activist, and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for governor of California. He 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, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. In 1919, he published The Brass Check, a muck-raking 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 also well remembered for the quote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." He used this line in speeches and the book about his campaign for governor as a way to explain why the editors and publishers of the major newspapers in California would not treat seriously his proposals for old age pensions and other progressive reforms. Many of his novels can be read as historical works. Writing during the Progressive Era, Sinclair describes the world of the industrialized United States from both the working man's and the industrialist's points of view. Novels such as King Coal (1917), The Coal War (published posthumously), Oil! (1927), and The Flivver King (1937) describe the working conditions of the coal, oil, and auto industries at the time.

The Flivver King describes the rise of Henry Ford, his "wage reform" and his company's Sociological Department, to his decline into antisemitism as publisher of The Dearborn Independent. King Coal confronts John D. Rockefeller Jr., and his role in the 1914 Ludlow Massacre in the coal fields of Colorado.

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 election.

Early life and education

Sinclair was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to Upton Beall Sinclair Sr. and Priscilla Harden Sinclair. His father was a liquor salesman whose alcoholism shadowed his son's childhood. Priscilla Harden Sinclair was a strict Episcopalian who disliked alcohol, tea, and coffee. Both of Upton Sinclair's parents were of British ancestry. His paternal grandparents were Scottish, and all of his ancestors emigrated to America from Great Britain during the late 1600s and early 1700s. As a child, Sinclair slept either on sofas or cross-ways on his parents' bed. When his father was out for the night, he would sleep in the bed with his mother. His mother's family was very affluent: her parents were very prosperous in Baltimore, and her sister married a millionaire. 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. Living in two social settings affected him and greatly influenced his books. Upton Beall Sinclair Sr. was from a highly respected family in the South, but the family was financially ruined by the Civil War, the end of slavery causing disruptions of the labor system during the Reconstruction era, and an extended agricultural depression.

As he was growing up, Upton's family moved frequently, as his father was not successful in his career. He developed a love for reading when he was five years old. He read every book his mother owned for a deeper understanding of the world. He did not start school until he was 10 years old. He was deficient in math and worked hard to catch up quickly because of his embarrassment. In 1888, the Sinclair family moved to Queens, New York City, where his father sold shoes. Upton entered the City College of New York five days before his 14th birthday, on September 15, 1892. He wrote jokes, dime novels, and magazine articles in boys' weekly and pulp magazines to pay for his tuition. With that income, he was able to move his parents to an apartment when he was seventeen years old.

He graduated from City College in June 1897. He subsequently studied law at Columbia University, but he was more interested in writing. He learned several languages, including Spanish, German, and French. He paid the one-time enrollment fee to be able to learn a variety of subjects. He would sign up for a class and then later drop it. He again supported himself through college by writing boys' adventure stories and jokes. He also sold ideas to cartoonists. Using stenographers, he wrote up to 8,000 words of pulp fiction per day. His only complaint about his educational experience was that it failed to educate him about socialism. After leaving Columbia without a degree, he wrote four books in the next four years; they were commercially unsuccessful though critically well-received: King Midas (1901), Prince Hagen (1902), The Journal of Arthur Stirling (1903), and a Civil War novel, Manassas (1904).

Sinclair did not get on with his mother when he became older because of her strict rules and refusal to allow him independence. Sinclair later told his son, David, that around Sinclair's 16th year, he decided not to have anything to do with his mother, staying away from her for 35 years because an argument would start if they met.

Upton became close with Reverend William Wilmerding Moir. Moir specialized in sexual abstinence and taught his beliefs to Sinclair. He was taught to "avoid the subject of sex." Sinclair was to report to Moir monthly regarding his abstinence. Despite their close relationship, Sinclair identified as agnostic.

Career

Sinclair considered himself a poet and dedicated his time to writing poetry. In 1904, Sinclair spent seven weeks in disguise, working undercover in Chicago's meatpacking plants to research his novel The Jungle (1906), a political exposé that addressed conditions in the plants, as well as the lives of poor immigrants. When it was published two years later, it became a bestseller. In the spring of 1905, Sinclair issued a call for the formation of a new organization, a group to be called the Intercollegiate Socialist Society.

With the income from The Jungle, Sinclair founded the utopian—but non-Jewish white only—Helicon Home Colony in Englewood, New Jersey. He ran as a Socialist candidate for Congress. The colony burned down under suspicious circumstances within a year.

In 1913–1914, Sinclair made three trips to the coal fields of Colorado, which led him to write King Coal and caused him to begin work on the larger, more historical The Coal War. In 1914, Sinclair helped organize demonstrations in New York City against Rockefeller at the Standard Oil offices. The demonstrations touched off more actions by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the Mother Earth group, a loose association of anarchists and IWW members, in Rockefeller's hometown of Tarrytown.

The Sinclairs moved to Pasadena, California in 1916 and lived there for nearly four decades. During his years with his second wife, Mary Craig, Sinclair wrote or produced several films. Recruited by Charlie Chaplin, Sinclair and Mary Craig produced Eisenstein's ¡Qué viva México! in 1930–32.

Other interests

Aside from his political and social writings, Sinclair took an interest in occult phenomena and experimented with telepathy. His book Mental Radio (1930) included accounts of his wife Mary's telepathic experiences and ability. William McDougall read the book and wrote an introduction to it, which led him to establish the parapsychology department at Duke University.

Political career

Sinclair broke with the Socialist Party in 1917 and supported the First World War effort. By the 1920s, however, he had returned to the party.

In the 1920s, the Sinclairs moved to Monrovia, California, (near Los Angeles), where Sinclair founded the state's chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Wanting to pursue politics, he twice ran unsuccessfully for the United States Congress on the Socialist Party ticket: in 1920 for the House of Representatives and in 1922 for the Senate. He was the party candidate for governor of California in 1926, winning nearly 46,000 votes, and in 1930, winning nearly 50,000 votes.

During this period, Sinclair was also active in radical politics in Los Angeles. For instance, in 1923, to support the challenged free speech rights of Industrial Workers of the World, Sinclair spoke at a rally during the San Pedro Maritime Strike, in a neighborhood now known as Liberty Hill. He began to read from the Bill of Rights and was promptly arrested, along with hundreds of others, by the LAPD. The arresting officer proclaimed: "We'll have none of that Constitution stuff".

In 1934, Sinclair ran in the California gubernatorial election as a Democrat. Sinclair's platform, known as the End Poverty in California movement (EPIC), galvanized the support of the Democratic Party, and Sinclair gained its nomination. Gaining 879,000 votes made this his most successful run for office, but incumbent Governor Frank Merriam defeated him by a sizable margin, gaining 1,138,000 votes. Hollywood studio bosses unanimously opposed Sinclair. They pressured their employees to assist and vote for Merriam's campaign, and made false propaganda films attacking Sinclair, giving him no opportunity to respond. The negative campaign tactics used against Sinclair are briefly depicted in the 2020 American biographical drama film Mank. Upton Sinclair later stated that there was a "campaign of lying" against him during the campaign which was "ordered by the biggest businessmen in California and paid for with millions of dollars" that was carried out by newspapers, politicians, advertisers, and the film industry.

Sinclair's plan to end poverty quickly became a controversial issue under the pressure of numerous migrants to California fleeing the Dust Bowl. Conservatives considered his proposal an attempted communist takeover of their state and quickly opposed him, using propaganda to portray Sinclair as a staunch communist. Sinclair had been a member of the Socialist Party from 1902 to 1934, when he became a Democrat, though always considering himself a socialist in spirit. The Socialist party in California and nationwide refused to allow its members to be active in any other party including the Democratic Party and expelled him, along with socialists who supported his California campaign. The expulsions destroyed the Socialist party in California.

At the same time, American and Soviet communists disassociated themselves from him, considering him a capitalist. In later writings, such as his anti-alcohol book The Cup of Fury, Sinclair scathingly censured communism. Science-fiction author Robert A. Heinlein was deeply involved in Sinclair's campaign, although he attempted to move away from the stance later in his life. In the 21st century, Sinclair is considered an early American democratic socialist.

After his loss to Merriam, Sinclair abandoned EPIC and politics to return to writing. In 1935, he published I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked, in which he described the techniques employed by Merriam's supporters, including the then popular Aimee Semple McPherson, who vehemently opposed socialism and what she perceived as Sinclair's modernism. Sinclair's line from this book "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it" has become well known and was for example quoted by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth.

Of his gubernatorial bid, 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.

Personal life

In April 1900, Sinclair went to Lake Massawippi in Quebec to work on a novel, renting a small cabin for three months and then moving to a farmhouse where he was reintroduced to his future first wife, Meta Fuller (1880–1964). A childhood friend descended from one of the First Families of Virginia, she was three years younger than he and aspired to be more than a housewife, so Sinclair instructed her in what to read and learn. Though each had warned the other against it, on October 18, 1900, they married. The couple having used abstinence as their main form of contraception, Meta became pregnant the following year. Despite Meta's several attempts to terminate the pregnancy, the child, David, was born on December 1, 1901. Meta and her family tried to convince Sinclair to give up writing and get "a job that would support his family."

Sinclair was opposed to sex outside of marriage and viewed it as necessary only for reproduction. He told his first wife Meta that only the birth of a child gave marriage "dignity and meaning". Despite his beliefs, Sinclair had a love affair with Anna Noyes during his marriage to Meta. He wrote a novel about the affair called Love's Progress, a sequel to Love's Pilgrimage. It was never published. His wife later had a love affair with John Armistead Collier, a theology student from Memphis; they had a son together named Ben.

In 1910, the Sinclairs moved to the single-tax village of Arden, Delaware, where they built a house. In 1911, Sinclair was arrested for playing tennis on the Sabbath and spent eighteen hours in the New Castle County prison in lieu of paying a fine. Earlier in 1911, Sinclair invited Harry Kemp, the "Vagabond Poet", to camp on the couple's land in Arden. Meta soon became enamored of Kemp, and in late August she left Sinclair for the poet. Sinclair, unable to obtain a divorce in New York, traveled to the Netherlands for a migratory divorce. An Amsterdam court declared their marriage annulled May 24, 1912 on the basis of adultery by Meta. Sinclair declared before the court that they were both living in Hilversum, The Netherlands, Meta being temporarily in New York.

In 1913, Sinclair married Mary Craig Kimbrough (1882–1961), a woman from an elite Greenwood, Mississippi, family who had written articles on Winnie Davis, the daughter of Confederate States of America President Jefferson Davis. They met when she attended one of his lectures about The Jungle. In 1914 he moved to Croton-on-Hudson, New York, joining the local community of prominent socialists. In the 1920s, the couple moved to California. They remained married until her death in 1961.

Later that same year, Sinclair married his third wife, Mary Elizabeth Willis (1882–1967). They moved to Buckeye, Arizona, before returning east to Bound Brook, New Jersey, where Sinclair died in a nursing home on November 25, 1968, a year after his wife. He is buried next to Willis in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

Writing

Sinclair devoted his writing career to documenting and criticizing the social and economic conditions of the early 20th century in both fiction and nonfiction. He exposed his view of the injustices of capitalism and the overwhelming effects of poverty among the working class. He also edited collections of fiction and nonfiction.

The Jungle

Further information: The Jungle

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, the 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 teenaged 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 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."

Bertolt Brecht's play, Saint Joan of the Stockyards, transporting Joan of Arc to the environment of the Chicago stockyards, is clearly inspired by "The Jungle".

The Brass Check

In The Brass Check (1919), Sinclair made a systematic and incriminating critique of the severe limitations of the "free press" in the United States. Among the topics covered is the use of yellow journalism techniques created by William Randolph Hearst. Sinclair called The Brass Check "the most important and most dangerous book I have ever written."

According to the Brass Check, "American Journalism is a class institution, serving the rich and spurning the poor." This bias, Sinclair felt, had profound implications for American democracy:

The social body to which we belong is at this moment passing through one of the greatest crises of its history .... What if the nerves upon which we depend for knowledge of this social body should give us false reports of its condition?

Sylvia novels

Sylvia (1913) was a novel about a Southern girl. In her autobiography, Mary Craig Sinclair said she had written the book based on her own experiences as a girl, and Upton collaborated with her. According to Craig, at her insistence, Sinclair published Sylvia (1913) under his name. In her 1957 memoir, she described how her husband and she had collaborated on the work: "Upton and I struggled through several chapters of Sylvia together, disagreeing about something on every page. But now and then each of us admitted that the other had improved something." When it appeared in 1913, The New York Times called it "the best novel Mr. Sinclair has yet written–so much the best that it stands in a class by itself."
Sylvia's Marriage (1914), Craig and Sinclair collaborated on a sequel, also published by John C. Winston Company under Upton Sinclair's name. In his 1962 autobiography, Upton Sinclair wrote: " Craig had written some tales of her Southern girlhood; and I had stolen them from her for a novel to be called Sylvia."

I, Governor of California, and How I Ended Poverty

This was a pamphlet he published in 1934 as a preface to running for office in the state of California. In the book he outlined his plans to run as a Democrat instead of a Socialist, and imagines his climb to the Democratic nomination, and then subsequent victory by a margin of 100,000 votes.

Lanny Budd series

Between 1940 and 1953, Sinclair wrote a series of 11 novels featuring a central character named Lanny Budd. The son of an American arms manufacturer, Budd is portrayed as holding in the confidence of world leaders, and not simply witnessing events, but often propelling them. As a sophisticated socialite who mingles easily with people from all cultures and socioeconomic classes, Budd has been characterized as the antithesis of the stereotyped "Ugly American".

Sinclair placed Budd within the important political events in the United States and Europe in the first half of the 20th century. An actual company named the Budd Company manufactured arms during World War II, founded by Edward G. Budd in 1912.

The novels were bestsellers upon publication and were published in translation, appearing in 21 countries. The third book in the series, Dragon's Teeth (1942), won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1943. Out of print and nearly forgotten for years, ebook editions of the Lanny Budd series were published in 2016.

The Lanny Budd series includes:

Other works

Sinclair was keenly interested in health and nutrition. He experimented with various diets, and with fasting. He wrote about this in his book, The Fasting Cure (1911), another bestseller. He believed that periodic fasting was important for health, saying, "I had taken several fasts of ten or twelve days' duration, with the result of a complete making over of my health".

Sinclair favored a raw food diet of predominantly vegetables and nuts. For long periods of time, he was a complete vegetarian, but he also experimented with eating meat. His attitude to these matters was fully explained in the chapter, "The Use of Meat", in the above-mentioned book. In the last years of his life, Sinclair strictly ate three meals a day consisting only of brown rice, fresh fruit and celery, topped with powdered milk and salt, and pineapple juice to drink.

Representation in popular culture

Sinclair Lewis refers to Upton Sinclair and his EPIC plan in the novel It Can't Happen Here (1935).
Sinclair appears in T. C. Boyle's novel The Road to Wellville (1993), which is built around a historical fictionalization of John Harvey Kellogg, the inventor of corn flakes and the founder of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. In the book, Sinclair and his first wife, Meta, appear as patients at the Sanitarium. Later, Kellogg is outraged when he discovers that another of his patients has been fasting after reading a typescript of Sinclair's The Fasting Cure.
Sinclair appears in the American Empire trilogy (2001–2003), part of the wider Southern Victory series of alternate history novels by Harry Turtledove. In the series, Sinclair becomes president of the United States, serving from 1921 to 1929, as the first president from the Socialist Party. During his administration, he builds up social welfare programs at home and tries to foster peace abroad. Sinclair takes a more lenient stance towards the Confederacy than his predecessor Theodore Roosevelt did, cancelling Great War reparations following the assassination of Confederate President Wade Hampton V in 1922.
Sinclair is featured as one of the main characters in Chris Bachelder's satirical novel, U.S.! (2005). Repeatedly, Sinclair is resurrected after his death and assassinated again, a "personification of the contemporary failings of the American left". He is portrayed as a quixotic reformer attempting to stir an apathetic American public to implement socialism in America.
Joyce Carol Oates refers to Sinclair and his first wife, Meta, in her novel The Accursed (2013).
Sinclair was portrayed by Bill Nye in David Fincher's biopic Mank (2020).

Films

The Jungle (1914) is a silent film adaptation of the 1906 novel, with George Nash playing Jurgis Rudkus and Gail Kane playing Ona Lukozsaite. The film is considered lost. Sinclair appears at the beginning and end of the film as a form of endorsement.
The Wet Parade (1932) is a film adaptation of Sinclair's eponymous 1931 novel, directed by Victor Fleming and starring Lewis Stone, Walter Huston, Dorothy Jordan, Neil Hamilton, Robert Young, and Jimmy Durante. Myrna Loy appears very briefly as an actress who runs an elegant speakeasy.
Walt Disney Productions adapted The Gnomobile (1937) into the 1967 musical motion picture The Gnome-Mobile.
Oil! (1927) was adapted as the film There Will Be Blood (2007), starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano, and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The film received eight Oscar nominations and won two.
In David Fincher's film drama Mank (2020), Bill Nye has a small role as Sinclair running for California governor in 1934 as the Democratic nominee.

Works

Fiction

Sinclair, Upton. Upton Sinclair Anthology (1947) online
Engs, Ruth Clifford, ed. Unseen Upton Sinclair: Nine Unpublished Stories, Essays and Other Works. (McFarland & Co. 2009).

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 – 1899
A Soldier's Pledge – 1899
Wolves of the Navy – 1899
Springtime and Harvest – 1901, reissued the same year as King Midas
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 Hagen – 1903
Manassas: A Novel of the War – 1904, reissued in 1959 as Theirs be the Guilt
A Captain of Industry – 1906
The Jungle – 1906
The Overman – 1907
The Industrial Republic – 1907
The Metropolis – 1908
The Moneychangers – 1908, reprinted as The Money Changers
Samuel The Seeker – 1910
Love's Pilgrimage – 1911
Damaged Goods – 1913
Sylvia – 1913
Sylvia's Marriage – 1914
King Coal – 1917
Jimmie Higgins – 1919
Debs and the Poets – 1920
100% – The Story of a Patriot – 1920
The Spy – 1920
They Call Me Carpenter: A Tale of the Second Coming – 1922
The Millennium – 1924
The Spokesman's Secretary – 1926
Money Writes! – 1927
Oil! – 1927
Boston, 2 vols. – 1928
Mountain City – 1930
Roman Holiday – 1931
The Wet Parade – 1931
American Outpost – 1932
The Way Out (novel) – 1933
Immediate Epic – 1933
The Lie Factory Starts – 1934
The Book of Love – 1934
Depression Island – 1935
Co-op: a Novel of Living Together – 1936
The Gnomobile – 1936, 1962
Wally for Queen – 1936
No Pasaran!: A Novel of the Battle of Madrid – 1937
The Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America – 1937
Little Steel – 1938
Our Lady – 1938
Expect No Peace – 1939
Marie Antoinette (novel) – 1939
Telling The World – 1939
Your Million Dollars – 1939
World's End – 1940
World's End Impending – 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
A Presidential Mission – 1947
A Giant's Strength – 1948
Limbo on the Loose – 1948
One Clear Call – 1948
O Shepherd, Speak! – 1949
Another Pamela – 1950
Schenk Stefan! – 1951
A Personal Jesus – 1952
The Return of Lanny Budd – 1953
What Didymus Did – UK 1954 / It Happened to Didymus – US 1958
Theirs Be the Guilt – 1959
Affectionately Eve – 1961
The Coal War – 1976

Autobiographical

The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair. With Maeve Elizabeth Flynn III. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962.
My Lifetime in Letters. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1960) online.
The Cup of Fury – 1956

Non-fiction

Good Health and How We Won It: With an Account of New Hygiene (1909) – 1909
The Fasting Cure – 1911
The Profits of Religion – 1917
The Brass Check – 1919
The McNeal-Sinclair Debate on Socialism – 1921
The Book of Life – 1921
The Goose-Step – 1923
The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools – 1924
Mammonart. An essay on economic interpretation. – 1925
Letters to Judd, an American Workingman – 1925
Mental Radio: Does it work, and how? – 1930, 1962
Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox – 1933
We, People of America, and how we ended poverty : a true story of the future – 1933
I, Governor of California – and How I Ended Poverty – 1933
The Epic Plan for California – 1934
I, Candidate for Governor – and How I Got Licked – 1935
Epic Answers: How to End Poverty in California (1935) – 1934
What God Means to Me – 1936
Upton Sinclair on the Soviet Union – 1938
Letters to a Millionaire – 1939

Drama

Plays of Protest: The Naturewoman, The Machine, The Second-Story Man, Prince Hagen – 1912
The Pot Boiler – 1913 (Not published in book form until 1924 – as Little Blue Book 589, issued by E. Haldeman-Julius.)
Hell: A Verse Drama and Photoplay – 1924
Singing Jailbirds: A Drama in Four Acts – 1924
Bill Porter: A Drama of O. Henry in Prison – 1925
The Enemy Had It Too: A Play in Three Acts – 1950

As editor

The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest – 1915

Explanatory notes

David Sinclair (1901–1987) became a physicist.

References

"The Jungle: Upton Sinclair's Roar Is Even Louder to Animal Advocates Today". hsus.org. The Humane Society of the United States. March 10, 2006. Archived from the original on January 6, 2010. Retrieved June 10, 2010.
"Upton Sinclair". Press in America – via PBworks.com..
^ "Books: Uppie's Goddess". Time. November 18, 1957. Archived from the original on March 28, 2012. Retrieved May 11, 2020..
^ Sinclair, Upton (1994). I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 109. ISBN 978-0-520-08197-0.
Kunitz, Stanley (1931). Living Authors: A Book of Biographies. New York: H.W. Wilson Co. pp. 375–376. OCLC 599950758.
^ Harris, Leon (1975). Upton Sinclair: American Rebel. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company.
^ Sinclair, Upton. "Joslyn T Pine Note". In Negri, Paul (ed.). The Jungle. Dover Thrift. pp. vii–viii.
Sinclair, Upton (1906). "What Life Means to Me". The Cosmopolitan. Schlicht & Field. pp. 591ff. Retrieved October 6, 2011.
^ "Upton Sinclair". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved November 20, 2022.
^ Yoder, Jon A. (1975). Upton Sinclair. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co.
Derrick, Scott (2002). "What a Beating Feels Like: Authorship Dissolution, and Masculinity in Sinclair's The Jungle". In Bloom, Harold (ed.). Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Infobase. pp. 131–132.
Laidler, Harry W. (October–November 1915). "Ten Years of ISS Progress". The Intercollegiate Socialist. 4 (1): 16.
Novak, Matt (August 8, 2013). "How Upton Sinclair Turned The Jungle Into a Failed New Jersey Utopia". gizmodo.com. Retrieved May 11, 2020.
"Upton Sinclair's Colony To Live At Helicon Hall. Luxury In Co-Operation And There May Be Some Compromises Just At First" (PDF). The New York Times. October 7, 1906. Archived (PDF) from the original on November 16, 2018. Retrieved August 22, 2009.
Paulin, LRE (March 1907). "Simplified Housekeeping: The Present Quarters of Upton Sinclair's Colony At Englewood, New Jersey". Indoors and Out: The Homebuilder's Magazine. III (6): 288–292. Retrieved August 16, 2009.
"Fire Wipes Out Helicon Hall, And Upton Sinclair Hints That the Steel Trust's Hand May Be In It" (PDF). The New York Times. March 17, 1907. Archived (PDF) from the original on April 30, 2020. Retrieved August 22, 2009.
Graham, John (1976). The Coal War. Boulder: Colorado Associated University Press. pp. lvi–lxxv. ISBN 0-87081-067-7.
Dashiell, Chris (1998), "Eisenstein's Mexican Dream", Cinescene, retrieved June 16, 2010.
Gardner, Martin (1957), Fads & Fallacies in the Name of Science, Courier Dover, pp. 309–310, Google Books.
Sinclair, Upton (1930), Mental Radio (Books), Upton Sinclair, ISBN 978-1606802540, retrieved July 25, 2010.
Kenyon, J. Douglas (2014). Atlantis Rising 107 – September/October 2014. Atlantis Rising LLC. ISBN 978-1634439206.
Gottlieb, Robert; Vallianatos, Mark; Freer, Regina M.; Dreier, Peter (2005). The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City (second ed.). Berkeley, California: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-25009-3.
Katrina Vanden Heuvel, The Nation 1865–1990, p. 80, Thunder's Mouth Press, 1990 ISBN 1-56025-001-1
Sinclair, Upton (October 13, 1934). "End Poverty in California The EPIC Movement". The Literary Digest – via sfmuseum.org.
Pesotta, Rose (1945). "Chapter 31". Bread Upon The Waters – via pitzer.edu.
Leicester Wagner, Rob (2016). Hollywood Bohemia: The Roots of Progressive Politics in Rob Wagner's Script. Janaway Publishing. ISBN 978-1-59641-369-6.
Cohen, Harvey G. (2015). "The Struggle to Fashion the NRA Code: The Triumph of Studio Power in 1933 Hollywood". Journal of American Studies. 50 (4): 1039–1066. doi:10.1017/S002187581500122X. ISSN 0021-8758. S2CID 147499614.
Mitchell, Greg "'Mank' and Politics: What Really Happened in 1934 California". The New York Times, Dec. 7, 2020.
Sinclair, Upton (2023). I, Candidate for Governor And How I Got Licked. University of California Press. p. 99.
^ Whitman, Alden (November 26, 1968). "Rebel With a Cause". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 17, 2000. Retrieved May 11, 2020.
Gregory, James N. (2015). "Upton Sinclair's 1934 EPIC Campaign: Anatomy of a Political Movement". Labor. 12 (4): 51–81. doi:10.1215/15476715-3155152.
Mitchell, Greg (1991). The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair and the EPIC Campaign in California. Atlantic Monthly Press.
Patterson, William H. Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century: Volume 1 (1907–1948): Learning Curve. New York: Tor Books, 2010; pp. 187–205, 527–530, and passim
Wittner, Lawrence (November 3, 2015). "Democratic Socialism Has Deep Roots in American Life". HuffPost. Retrieved September 5, 2018.
Dreier, Peter (July 3, 2018). "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Resurgence of Democratic Socialism in America". The American Prospect. Retrieved September 7, 2018.
Rossiter, Caleb S. The Turkey and the Eagle: The Struggle for America's Global Role. p. 207.
Sinclair, Upton (September 25, 1951). "Socialist Party of America: Letter to Norman Thomas". Spartacus Educational. Archived from the original on December 31, 2006. Retrieved June 10, 2010.
"David Sinclair Is Dead; Researcher in Physics". The New York Times. October 26, 1987.
^ "Upton Sinclair, Author, Dead", The New York Times, November 26, 1968, retrieved June 2, 2018.
Arthur 2006, pp. 96–97.
Arthur 2006, pp. 46–47.
Arthur 2006, p. 109.
Arthur 2006, pp. 111–12.
"Walking tour celebrates history of Arden community". Deseret News. October 15, 2012. Retrieved December 2, 2020.
"Upton Sinclair in Jail; With Ten Others for Violating Delaware's Sunday Law". The New York Times. August 2, 1911. Retrieved December 2, 2020.
"Arden Claims Upton Sinclair". The News Journal. Wilmington, DE. September 1, 1934. p. 6. OCLC 760300114. Retrieved December 2, 2020.
Leech, Steven. "Comedy and Romance in Arden, Delaware". The Broadkill Review. 10 (2): 1, 19–20. ISSN 1935-0538. OCLC 76893150.
^ Brevda, William (1986). "Love's Coming-of-Age". Harry Kemp, the last Bohemian. London: Bucknell University Press Associated University Presses. pp. 55–65. ISBN 978-0838750865. OCLC 610117506.
Riley, Glenda (1991). Divorce: An American Tradition. Oxford University Press. p. 131. ISBN 0195061233.
Arthur 2006, pp. 118–19.
"Tantor Media – Upton Sinclair". Tantor Media. 2020. Retrieved February 18, 2023. In 1914, Sinclair moved to Croton-on-Hudson, a small town close to New York City where there was a substantial community of radicals. He pleased his socialist friends with his anthology of social protest, The Cry of Justice
"Mrs. Upton Sinclair, Author's Wife, Dies". The Bridgeport Post. Bridgeport, Connecticut. December 20, 1967. p. 72. Retrieved May 17, 2016 – via Newspapers.com.
"The Jungle", History News Network
"Socalhistory.org". Archived from the original on May 27, 2012. Retrieved June 5, 2012.
"Sinclair's 'The Jungle' Turns 100". PBS Newshour. May 10, 2006. Archived from the original on January 8, 2014. Retrieved June 10, 2010 – via PBS.org.
Sinclair, Upton. Harold, Bloom (ed.). The Jungle (2002 ed.). Infobase Publishing. p. 11.
Oursler, Fulton (1964). Behold This Dreamer!. Boston: Little, Brown. p. 417.
Roosevelt, Theodore (1951–54), "July 31, 1906", in Morison, Elting E. (ed.), The Letters, vol. 5, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, p. 340.
"Upton Sinclair, The Jungle", Spartacus, UK: School net, archived from the original on September 23, 2006.
"Upton Sinclair & The Jungle", Socialist Standard, no. 1227, World Socialism, November 2006.
Sinclair, Mary Craig. Southern Belle. pp. 106–108, 111–112, 129–132, 142, quote: pp. 111–112.
Prenshaw, Peggy W. (1981). "Sinclair, Mary Craig Kimbrough". In Lloyd, James B. (ed.). Lives of Mississippi Authors, 1817–1967. pp. 409–410. ISBN 978-1617034183. Retrieved November 9, 2010 – via Google Books..
"'Sylvia': Mr. Upton Sinclair's Novel upon a Much-Discussed Theme", The New York Times, May 25, 1913, retrieved November 6, 2010
Southern Belle, p. 146.
Sinclair, Upton (1962). The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. pp. 180, 195.
"Upton Sinclair's End Poverty in California Campaign". Mapping American Social Movements Through the 20th Century. Civil Rights and Labor History Consortium / University of Washington. Retrieved December 20, 2020.
Morris, Adam (May 13, 2019). "Mankind, Unite! How Upton Sinclair's 1934 run for governor of California inspired a cult". Lapham's Quarterly. Retrieved May 15, 2019.
Lepore, Jill (September 24, 2012). "The Lie Factory". The New Yorker.
Salamon, Julie (July 22, 2005). "Upton Sinclair: Revisit to Old Hero Finds He's Still Lively". The New York Times. Books. Retrieved January 21, 2010.
Brennan, Elizabeth A.; Clarage, Elizabeth C. (1999). Who's Who of Pulitzer Prize Winners. Phoenix: Oryx Press. p. 493. ISBN 978-1-57356-111-2. Retrieved November 29, 2011.
"The Lanny Budd Novels Volume One by Upton Sinclair". openroadmedia.com. Archived from the original (Review) on February 5, 2016. Retrieved February 5, 2016.
"'The Fasting Cure', by Upton Sinclair" Archived August 10, 2015, at the Wayback Machine, Soil and Health
"Perfect Health!" (chapter) Archived March 21, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, The Fasting Cure, at Soil and Health
"The Use of Meat" (chapter) Archived May 14, 2015, at the Wayback Machine. The Fasting Cure, at Soil and Health
Sinclair, Upton (1911). "The Use of Meat". The Fasting Cure. Digitized by Harvard University. New York: Mitchell Kennerly. pp. 86–104. ISBN 978-1852286095.
"Upton Sinclair Okays Series on 'Lanny Budd'". The Desert Sun. Vol. 35, no. 34. United Press International. September 13, 1961.
L'Official, Peter. "Left Behind". The Village Voice (14 February 2006). Archived from the original on May 16, 2008. Retrieved November 17, 2011.
"The Jungle". silentera.com.
Hal Erickson (2008), "The Jungle (1914)", Movies & TV Dept., The New York Times, archived from the original on March 5, 2008, retrieved July 1, 2010.
"The Wet Parade (1932) – Full Credits". TCM.com. Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved February 4, 2020.
The Gnome-Mobile at IMDb
There Will Be Blood at IMDb
Upton Sinclair on the Soviet Union. New York: Weekly Masses Co. 1938 – via archive.org.

External links

"Upton Sinclair: An Inventory of His Collection" . Upton Sinclair Collection, ID: Manuscript Collection MS-3848. Austin, TX: Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas.
Upton Sinclair Collection at the Harry Ransom Center
Phelps, Christopher (June 26, 2006), The Fictitious Suppression of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, History News network.
Upton Sinclair, "EPIC", Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco
"A Tribute To Two Sinclairs", Sinclair Lewis & Upton Sinclair
"Writings of Upton Sinclair" from C-SPAN's American Writers: A Journey Through History
Upton Sinclair – Induction into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame
Image of Upton Sinclair and wife Mary Craig, Santa Barbara, California, 1935. Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive (Collection 1429). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

Electronic editions

Works by Upton Sinclair in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
Works by Upton Sinclair at Project Gutenberg
Works by Upton Sinclair at Faded Page (Canada)
Works by or about Upton Sinclair at the Internet Archive
Works by Upton Sinclair at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest, Bartleby.com
"Upton Sinclair's 1929 letter to John Beardsley", Upton Sinclair to John Beardsley

Party political offices
Preceded byMilton M. Young	Democratic nominee for governor of California 1934	Succeeded byCulbert Olson
VacantTitle last held byNoble A. Richardson, 1914	Socialist nominee for governor of California 1926, 1930	Party defunct

v t e Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Previously the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel from 1917–1947
1918–1925	His Family by Ernest Poole (1918) The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (1919) The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1921) Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington (1922) One of Ours by Willa Cather (1923) The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson (1924) So Big by Edna Ferber (1925)
1926–1950	Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (1926; declined) Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield (1927) The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (1928) Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin (1929) Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge (1930) Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes (1931) The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (1932) The Store by Thomas Sigismund Stribling (1933) Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Pafford Miller (1934) Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson (1935) Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis (1936) Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1937) The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand (1938) The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1939) The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1940) In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow (1942) Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair (1943) Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin (1944) A Bell for Adano by John Hersey (1945) All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (1947) Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener (1948) Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens (1949) The Way West by A. B. Guthrie Jr. (1950)
1951–1975	The Town by Conrad Richter (1951) The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk (1952) The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1953) A Fable by William Faulkner (1955) Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor (1956) A Death in the Family by James Agee (1958) The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor (1959) Advise and Consent by Allen Drury (1960) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1961) The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor (1962) The Reivers by William Faulkner (1963) The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau (1965) The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter (1966) The Fixer by Bernard Malamud (1967) The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron (1968) House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday (1969) The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford by Jean Stafford (1970) Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (1972) The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty (1973) No award given (1974) The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (1975)
1976–2000	Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow (1976) No award given (1977) Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson (1978) The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever (1979) The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer (1980) A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1981) Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike (1982) The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1983) Ironweed by William Kennedy (1984) Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie (1985) Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1986) A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor (1987) Beloved by Toni Morrison (1988) Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (1989) The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos (1990) Rabbit at Rest by John Updike (1991) A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (1992) A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler (1993) The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (1994) The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (1995) Independence Day by Richard Ford (1996) Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser (1997) American Pastoral by Philip Roth (1998) The Hours by Michael Cunningham (1999) Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
2001–present	The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2001) Empire Falls by Richard Russo (2002) Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2003) The Known World by Edward P. Jones (2004) Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (2005) March by Geraldine Brooks (2006) The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2007) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (2008) Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (2009) Tinkers by Paul Harding (2010) A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2011) No award given (2012) The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson (2013) The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (2014) All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2015) The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2016) The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2017) Less by Andrew Sean Greer (2018) The Overstory by Richard Powers (2019) The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (2020) The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich (2021) The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen (2022) Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver / Trust by Hernan Diaz (2023) Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips (2024)

v t e California Democratic Party
Chairpersons	Roosevelt Pelosi Brown Angelides Press Torres Burton Bauman Hicks
Gub./Lt. Gub. nominees	Maguire/Hutchinson (1898) Lane/Dockweiler (1902) Bell/Toland (1906) Bell/Spellacy (1910) Curtin/Snyder (1914) None/Snyder (1918) Woolwine/Shearer (1922) Wardell/Dunbar (1926) Young/Welsh (1930) Sinclair/Downey (1934) Olson/Patterson (1938, 1942) Roosevelt/Shelley (1946) Roosevelt/None (1950) Graves/Roybal (1954) P. Brown/Anderson (1958, 1962, 1966) Unruh/Alquist (1970) J. Brown/Dymally (1974, 1978) Bradley/McCarthy (1982, 1986) Feinstein/McCarthy (1990) K. Brown/Davis (1994) Davis/Bustamante (1998, 2002, 2003) Angelides/Garamendi (2006) J. Brown/Newsom (2010, 2014) Newsom/Kounalakis (2018, 2022)
Presidential primaries	2000 2004 2008 2016 2020

v t e Works by Upton Sinclair
Lanny Budd series	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) The Return of Lanny Budd (1953)
Other fiction	The Journal of Arthur Stirling (1903) The Jungle (1906) King Coal (1917) They Call Me Carpenter (1922) Oil! (1927) Boston (1928) Roman Holiday (1931) The Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America (1937) Little Steel (1938) The Coal War (1976)
Non-fiction	The Fasting Cure (1911) The Profits of Religion (1917) The Brass Check (1919) The Goose-step: A Study of American Education (1923) Mammonart (1925) Mental Radio: Does it work, and how? (1930) Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox (1933) The Cup of Fury (1956)
Film adaptations	The Jungle (1914) The Wet Parade (1932) The Gnome-Mobile (1967) There Will Be Blood (2007)
Related	End Poverty in California 1934 California gubernatorial election Mary Craig Sinclair (2nd wife) Upton Sinclair House ¡Que viva México! Mank

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