Upton Sinclair by Floyd Dell — Read

I.

Upton Sinclair was born in Baltimore, Maryland, September 20th, 1878. His father was one of the Norfolk Sinclairs, his mother one of the Baltimore Hardens. That is to say, he was by ancestry and birth a Southerner. His childhood, moreover -- until his tenth year, when his family moved to New York City -- was spent in the very Southern atmosphere of Baltimore.... This background is so alien to the theme of modern American industrialism as to arouse a wonder and provoke a question: How did this child of the South ever come to write _The Jungle_?