SOURCE: Dawson, Hugh J. “Winston Churchill and Upton Sinclair: An Early Review of The Jungle.” American Literary Realism, 1870-1910 24, no. 1 (fall 1991): 72-8.

In the following essay, Dawson examines Winston Churchill's 1906 review of The Jungle to discover the impression, sometimes extreme, Churchill gave of Chicago to his fellow Englishmen.

The celebrity of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle preceded its appearance in book form. The early fame that derived from its serialization in J. A. Wayland's socialist weekly Appeal to Reason and One-Hoss Philosophy during the preceding year had already brought about the federal government's investigation of the Chicago meat-packing industry.¹ Publication of its very extensively revised text as a book drew the salute of Winston Churchill, then a young Liberal Party member of the House of Commons. That Churchill, whose own political novel Savrola: A Tale of the Revolution in Laurania had been published six years earlier, took the initiative...