Sherwood Anderson
(1876 - 1941)
American author, poet, playwright, essayist, and newspaper editor, wrote Winesburg, Ohio (1919), "The Book of the Grotesque". A collection of excellent examples of the short story genre and set in small town America, the stories are loosely connected by journalist George Willard writing of the sometimes "grotesque" sides of the human condition including poverty, marginalisation, love and romance. Many of Anderson's contributions to American Literature reflect his own struggles between the material and spiritual worlds as husband, father, author, and businessman and also cover issues as wide-ranging from labour conditions to marriage.
Sherwood Anderson was born on 13 September 1876 in Camden, Ohio to parents Irwin McClain Anderson and Emma Jane Smith. After many years during which the family traveled for Irwin to find work and Sherwood only periodically attending school, he moved by himself to Chicago, Illinois. He attended night school and worked various jobs including farm laborer, factory hand, and newsboy. He was a successful ad copywriter and served in the Spanish American War (1898-9).
Early on he was writing his own poetry and short stories, influenced by such notable authors as Carl Sandburg and Gertrude Stein. Possibly because of his early transient life and often straightened circumstances he became known for his stories that gave a voice to small town American characters and their plight with finding the American Dream. In Ohio, Sherwood met and married Cornelia Lane in 1904 with whom he'd have three children, Robert, John and Marion. A few years later he founded the Anderson Manufacturing Company, a successful firm carrying a popular product called "Roof-Fix". He enjoyed the fruits of the bourgeois lifestyle of family and a stable income but it was not long before he suffered a nervous breakdown and divorced Lane.
Back in Chicago he focused on writing again, his first novel published when he was forty, Windy McPherson's Son (1916). The same year he married Tennessee Mitchell.Marching Men (1917) and Mid-American Chants (1918) followed. Hugh McVey, inventor, is the main character of Poor White (1920). The Triumph of the Egg: A Book of Impressions from American Life (1921) followed. Many Marriages (1923) was followed by his autobiography A Story Teller's Tale (1924). He married Elizabeth Prall in 1923.
In 1925 the Andersons settled in Grayson County near Troutdale, Virginia, where he purchased property and built a house he called "Ripshin" after the adjacent creek. In Dark Laughter (1925) was followed byTar: A Midwestern Childhood (1926) and Sherwood Anderson's Notebook(1926). A year later he purchased the Marion Publishing Company of Marion, Virginia. Hello Towns! (1929) contains some of his editorials and sketches. It was followed by Beyond Desire(1932) and Death in the Woods(1933). The same year he married Eleanor Copenhaver, with whom he traveled extensively in North America and beyond. In 1937 he publishedPlays, Winesburg and Others. His last work is an extensive essay entitled Home Town(1940).
Sherwood Anderson died of peritonitis on 8 March 8 1941, whilst travelling in Colon, Panama. He lies buried at the Round Hill Cemetery in Marion, Smyth County, Virginia. His epitaph reads "Life not death is the greatest adventure". Many of his works are still in print.
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For further reading: Sherwood Anderson: A Writer in America, Volume 1 by Walter B. Rideout (2006); Sherwood Anderson: An AmericanCareer by John Earl Bassett (2005); Sherwood Anderson and the American Short Story by P.A. Abraham (1994); A Reader's Guide to the Short Stories of Sherwood Anderson by Judy Jo Small (1994); A Study of the Short Fiction by R.A. Papinchak (1992);Winesburg, Ohio: An Exploration by Ray Lewis White (1990); A Story Teller and a City by Kenny J. Williams (1988); Sherwood Anderson by K. Townsend (1987);Sherwood Anderson: Centennial Studies, ed. by H. Campbell and C. Modlin (1976); Sherwood Anderson: Dimensions of His Literary Art, ed. by D. Anderson (1976); Sherwood Anderson: Essays in Criticism, ed. by W. Rideout (1974); The Road to Winesburg by W. Sutton (1972);Sherwood Anderson by D. Anderson (1967); Sherwood Anderson by B. Weber (1964); Sherwood Anderson by R. Burbank (1964); Sherwood Anderson: A Bibliography by E. Sheehy and K. Lohf (1960); Sherwood Anderson by J. Schevill (1951); Sherwood Anderson by I. Howe (1951)
"The young man's mind was carried away by his growing passion for dreams. One looking at him would not have thought him particularly sharp. With the recollection of little things occupying his mind he closed his eyes and leaned back in the car seat. He stayed that way for a long time and when he aroused himself and again looked out of the car window the town of Winesburg had disappeared and his life there had become but a background on which to paint his dreams of his manhood."
From Winesburg, Ohio
Works
Novels
Windy McPherson´s Son (1916)
Maching Men (1917)
Poor White (1920)
Mary Marriages (1923)
Dark Laughter (1925)
Tar: A Midwest Childhood (1926, semi-autobiographical novel)
Alice and The Lost Novel (1929)
Beyond Desire (1932)
Kit Brandon: A Portrait (1936)
Short Story collections
Winesburgo Ohio (1919)
The Triumph of the Egg: A Book of Impressions From American Life in Tales and Poemas (1921)
Horses and Men (1923)
Death in the Woods and Other Stories (1933)
Poetry
Mid-American Chants (1918)
A New Testament (1927)
Drama
Plays, Winesburg and Others (1937)
Nonfiction
A Story Teller's Story (1924, memoir)
The Modern Writer (1925, essays)
Sherwood Anderson's Notebook (1926, memoir)
Hello Towns! (1929, collected newspaper articles)
Nearer the Grass Roots (1929, essays)
The American County Fair (1930, essays)
Perhaps Women (1931, essays)
No Swank (1934, essays)
Puzzled America (1935, essays)
A Writer's Conception of Realism (1939, essays)
Home Town (1940, photographs and commentary)
Published posthumously
Sherwood Anderson's Memoirs (1942)
The Sherwood Anderson Reader, edited by Paul Rosenfeld (1947)
The Portable Sherwood Anderson, edited by Horace Gregory (1949)
Letters of Sherwood Anderson, edited by Howard Mumford Jones and Walter B. Rideout (1953)
Sherwood Anderson: Short Stories, edited by Maxwell Geismar (1962)
Return to Winesburg: Selections from Four Years of Writing for a Country Newspaper, edited by Ray Lewis White (1967)
The Buck Fever Papers, edited by Welford Dunaway Taylor (1971, collected newspaper articles)
Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein: Correspondence and Personal Essays, edited by Ray Lewis White (1972)
The "Writer's Book," edited by Martha Mulroy Curry (1975, unpublished works)
France and Sherwood Anderson: Paris Notebook, 1921, edited by Michael Fanning (1976)
Sherwood Anderson: The Writer at His Craft, edited by Jack Salzman, David D. Anderson, and Kichinosuke Ohashi (1979)
A Teller's Tales, selected and introduced by Frank Gado (1983)
Sherwood Anderson: Selected Letters: 1916–1933, edited by Charles E. Modlin (1984)
Letters to Bab: Sherwood Anderson to Marietta D. Finely, 1916–1933, edited by William A. Sutton (1985)
The Sherwood Anderson Diaries, 1936–1941, edited by Hilbert H. Campbell (1987)
Sherwood Anderson: Early Writings, edited by Ray Lewis White (1989)
Sherwood Anderson's Love Letters to Eleanor Copenhaver Anderson, edited by Charles E. Modlin (1989)
Sherwood Anderson's Secret Love Letters, edited by Ray Lewis White (1991)
Certain Things Last: The Selected Stories of Sherwood Anderson, edited by Charles E. Modlin (1992)
Southern Odyssey: Selected Writings by Sherwood Anderson, edited by Welford Dunaway Taylor and Charles E. Modlin (1997)
The Egg and Other Stories, edited with an introduction by Charles E. Modlin (1998)
Collected Stories, edited by Charles Baxter (2012)
Source: Wikipedia
