Upton Beall Sinclair

Upton Beall Sinclair (1878–1968) was an American novelist, journalist, social reformer, and political activist. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, he grew up in a family whose financial circumstances exposed him to both poverty and wealth, experiences that later influenced his interest in social inequality. Sinclair wrote more than ninety books across many genres, but he became particularly famous for novels addressing social and economic problems. His best-known work, The Jungle (1906), exposed the harsh working conditions and unsanitary practices of the American meatpacking industry. The novel caused a public outcry and contributed to reforms in food safety and meat inspection in the United States. Sinclair continued to investigate social injustice in works such as King Coal, Oil!, and The Brass Check. His Lanny Budd series, a sequence of eleven historical novels published between 1940 and 1953, explored major political events of the twentieth century. A committed socialist, Sinclair was actively involved in American politics and ran unsuccessfully for political office several times. In 1934, he became the Democratic candidate for governor of California with his “End Poverty in California” campaign. Sinclair received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943 for Dragon's Teeth, a novel dealing with the rise of Nazi Germany. His combination of investigative writing, fiction, and political activism made him one of the most prominent American social critics of the twentieth century.