Upton Sinclair

Born in Baltimore in 1878, Upton Sinclair is something of a prophet without honor in his own country. He wrote more than one hundred books, a thousand translations of which have been published in fifty languages, and which have sold by the millions throughout the world. Yet he is a much neglected author in America, probably best known for his novel, The Jungle, a muckraking account of conditions in the meat-packing industry in Chicago, published in 1906.

An early convert to socialism, he was both a prolific writer and a political activist, an unsuccessful candidate for both the Senate and the governorship of California in the course of his long career and association with the socialist and liberal causes. His works include: The Moneychangers (1908), King Coal (1917), Oil (1927), and a series of eleven novels begun in 1940 about the adventures of Lanny Budd, known collectively as World's End. Sinclair died in 1968 at the age of ninety.