Sherwood Anderson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
Sherwood Anderson

Anderson in 1933
Born September 13, 1876(1876-09-13)
Camden, Ohio, United States
Died March 8, 1941 (aged 64)
Panama
Occupation Author
Notable work(s) Winesburg, Ohio
Influenced

Sherwood Anderson (September 13, 1876 – March 8, 1941) was an American writer, mainly of short stories, most notably the collection Winesburg, Ohio. His influence on American fiction was profound;[citation needed] his literary voice can be heard in Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, John Steinbeck, and others.[1]

Contents

[edit] Biography

He was born in Camden, Ohio, the third of Erwin M. and Emma S. Anderson's seven children. After his father's business failed, they were forced to move frequently, finally settling down at Clyde, Ohio, in 1884. Family difficulties led his father to begin drinking heavily. His father died in 1895. Partly as a result of these misfortunes, Anderson eagerly worked odd jobs to help his family. It earned him the nickname "Jobby." He left school at 14.

He moved to Chicago near his brother Karl's home. He worked as a manual laborer until near the turn of the century, when he enlisted in the United States Army. He was called but did not see action in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. After the war in 1900, he attended Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. Eventually he secured a job as a copywriter in Chicago and was highly successful. In 1904 he married Cornelia Lane, the daughter of a wealthy Ohio family.

He fathered three children while living in Cleveland, Ohio, and later Elyria, Ohio, where he managed a mail-order business and paint manufacturing firms. In November 1912 he disappeared for four days after suffering a mental breakdown. He described this as "escaping from his materialistic existence," which garnered praise from many other writers, who used his "courage" as an example. He moved back to Chicago, working again for a publishing and advertising company.

In 1916, he divorced Cornelia Lane and married Tennessee Mitchell. That same year, his first novel, Windy McPherson's Son, was published. Three years later, his second major work, Marching Men, was published. However, he is most famous for his collection of interrelated short stories, which he began writing in 1919, known as Winesburg, Ohio. He claimed that Hands, the opening story, was the first "real" story he ever wrote. His themes are comparable to those of T. S. Eliot and other modernist writers.

Although his short stories, especially those mentioned, were very successful, he felt the need to write novels. In 1920, he published Poor White, a rather successful novel. He wrote various novels before divorcing Mitchell in 1922 and marrying Elizabeth Prall, two years later.

In 1923, Anderson published Many Marriages, the themes of which he would carry over into much of his later writing. The novel had its detractors, but the reviews were, on the whole, positive. F. Scott Fitzgerald, for example, considered Many Marriages and "Circle Of Death" Anderson's finest novels.

Beginning in 1924, Anderson lived in the historic Pontalba Apartments (540-B St. Peter Street) adjoining Jackson Square in New Orleans. There he and his wife entertained William Faulkner, Carl Sandburg, Edmund Wilson and other literary luminaries. Of Faulkner, in fact, he wrote his ambiguous and moving short story "A Meeting South," and, in 1925, wrote Dark Laughter, a novel rooted in his New Orleans experience. Although the book is now out of print (and was satirized by Ernest Hemingway in his novel The Torrents of Spring), it was Anderson's only best-seller.

Anderson's third marriage also failed, and Anderson married Eleanor Copenhaver in the late 1920s. They traveled and often studied together. In the 1930s, he published Death in the Woods Puzzled America (a book of essays), and Kit Brandon, which was published in 1936.

He dedicated his 1932 novel Beyond Desire to Copenhaver. Although he was much less influential in this final writing period, many of Anderson's more significant lines of prose were present in these works, which were generally considered sub-par compared to his others.

He died in Panama of peritonitis after accidentally swallowing a piece of a toothpick embedded in a martini olive at a party, aged 64. Sherwood Anderson was buried at Round Hill Cemetery in Marion, Virginia. His epitaph reads, "Life Not Death is the Great Adventure".

Anderson's final home, known as Ripshin, still stands in Troutdale, Virginia, and may be toured by appointment.

[edit] Works

[edit] References

  • Cox, Leland H., Jr. (1980), “Sherwood Anderson”, American Writers in Paris, 1920-1939, vol. 4, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Detroit, Mich.: Gale Research Co. 

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Wikisource
Wikisource has original works written by or about:
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherwood_Anderson"
Personal tools