Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr. was born in a boardinghouse in Baltimore, Maryland on September 20, 1878, to Upton Beall and Priscilla Harden Sinclair. Sinclair's childhood was complicated and the future of his family was always economically uncertain. His family was still recovering from the devastation dealt to the Southern aristocracy by Federal Reconstruction, and his father, an unsuccessful liquor salesman, was an alcoholic who often squandered the family's income. When he was ten, Sinclair's family moved to New York City, where they lived in numerous boardinghouses. Sinclair explains, "...one night I would be sleeping on a vermin-ridden sofa in a lodging house, and the next night under silken coverlets in a fashionable home. It all depended on whether my father had the money for that week's board" (qtd. in Liukkonen).

Priscilla was unlike Upton Sr. in many ways. Where he...