Everything you need to study or teach literature!

The Jungle Author Biography

Upton Sinclair is best known today as the author of The Jungle, which is probably a legacy he would accept, since it is true that this novel did indeed affect society in the way he wanted all of his books to do. He was a prolific writer throughout his long life, and everything he wrote was written with the intent of changing society. Sinclair was born in 1878 with a volatile social background: his mother came from a wealthy and respected Baltimore family, and his father, a salesman, struggled without much success to give her the lifestyle she had been accustomed to. One of the reasons his father was unsuccessful at business was that he was an alcoholic, which is why Sinclair, when he grew up, supported laws that prohibited the sale and use of alcohol (this cause was popular enough to be passed into federal law from 1920 to...
(read more)