Winesburg, Ohio

“When he calls himself a ‘poor scribbler’ don’t believe him. He is not a poor scribbler … he is a very great writer.”–Ernest Hemingway

“Winesburg, Ohio, when it first appeared, kept me up a whole night in a steady crescendo of emotion.”–Hart Crane

“As a rule, first books show more bravado than anything else, unless it be tediousness. But there is neither of these qualities in Winesburg, Ohio… . These people live and breathe: they are beautiful.”–E. M. Forster

“Winesburg, Ohio is an extraordinarily good book. But it is not fiction. It is poetry.”–Rebecca West

Sherwood Anderson was born in Camden, Ohio, on September 13, 1876. His father was an itinerant harness maker and house painter. In 1883 the Andersons settled in Clyde, Ohio, a small town that later served as a model for Winesburg. There, young Sherwood held odd jobs to help support the family.

Although he received a spotty education and never finished high school, Anderson possessed an entrepreneurial spirit. After his mother’s death in 1895, he journeyed to Chicago and found employment in a warehouse, later serving in the military in Cuba at the end of the Spanish-American War. Upon his return, he attended Wittenberg College for a year.

In 1900, Anderson took a job in Chicago as an advertising copywriter, and in his spare time, he pursued creative writing. After his marriage in 1904 to Cornelia Lane, with whom he had three children, Anderson became head of a mail-order firm in Cleveland and later established his own business in Elyria, Ohio.

Around 1910, Anderson began writing novels, stating, “I am one, who loves, like a drunkard his drink, the smell of ink, and the sight of a great pile of white paper that may be scrawled upon always gladdens me.” In November 1912, he suffered a nervous breakdown and returned to Chicago to resume his career in advertising. He became part of the “Chicago Renaissance” alongside writers like Carl Sandburg and Ben Hecht.

In 1916, he published some of the Winesburg tales in literary magazines and his first novel, the autobiographical Windy McPherson’s Son. That same year, his marriage ended in divorce, and Anderson married Tennessee Mitchell, a sculptor. His second novel, Marching Men, followed in 1917, and a book of poems, Mid-American Chants, came out in 1918.

His 1919 book, Winesburg, Ohio, secured Anderson’s reputation. H. L. Mencken described it as unlike anything done before in America, breaking conventions to reveal the lives of small-town inhabitants. Critic Malcolm Cowley noted that Anderson became a “writer’s writer,” influencing generations of storytellers.

The 1920s were productive. He published Poor White (1920), depicting a small town transformed by the industrial revolution. In 1921, he traveled to Europe and met James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. The Triumph of the Egg, a collection of tales and poems, was published to critical acclaim, and The Dial awarded him its first annual prize for literature. He continued to write novels, including Many Marriages (1922) and his bestseller Dark Laughter (1925), as well as story collections and personal narratives like A Story Teller’s Story (1924) and Tar: A Midwest Childhood (1926). Despite this output, some works received mixed reviews, leading to a perception that he hadn’t lived up to his earlier promise.

Anderson’s personal life also saw changes. He divorced his second wife in 1924 and married Elizabeth Prall. They lived in New Orleans, where Anderson befriended William Faulkner. Earlier, in Chicago, Anderson had encouraged Ernest Hemingway, who later parodied him. In 1926, Anderson lectured to help pay for a farm near Marion, Virginia, which became his home. He also purchased two Virginia newspapers, and fearing he had “written himself out,” he edited them for a period. Hello Towns!, a collection of articles from these papers, was published in 1929 to poor reviews. He separated from his third wife that year, divorcing in 1932.

Anderson’s literary reputation declined in the 1930s. He published two novels, Beyond Desire (1932) and Kit Brandon (1936), and a final volume of stories, Death in the Woods and Other Stories (1933), along with essay collections. He also dramatized Winesburg, Ohio and other works. Home Town, the last book published in his lifetime, appeared in 1939.

In February 1941, he sailed for South America with his fourth wife, Eleanor Copenhaver. Taken ill aboard ship, Sherwood Anderson died of peritonitis in a hospital in the Panama Canal Zone on March 8, 1941. He was buried in Marion, Virginia. His final work, Sherwood Anderson’s Memoirs, was published posthumously in 1942.

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