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Upton Sinclair Facts

Upton Sinclair Facts
Upton Sinclair was an American author of almost 100 books, most well-known for his novel The Jungle and for winning the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He was born Upton Beall Sinclair Jr., on September 20, 1878, in Baltimore, Maryland, to Priscilla Harden Sinclair and Upton Beall Sinclair Sr. His mother came from an affluent family while his father was an alcohol salesman and had a drinking problem. Upton often stayed with his grandparents. Upton's family moved a lot while he was growing up as his father was not financially sound. Upton began reading when he was five but did not start school until he was 10 years old. He enrolled at City College of New York right before his 14th birthday. He was being paid for his writing already, which paid for his education. When he was 17 he was able to use his earnings to move his parents into an apartment.
Interesting Upton Sinclair Facts:
Upton Sinclair graduated from City College of New York in 1897.
Upton Sinclair went on to study law at Columbia University but preferred to focus on his writing. He was writing up to 8000 words a day with the help of stenographers, and selling pulp fiction and adventure stories and jokes to pay for his tuition.
After Columbia Upton wrote four books in four years, including King Midas, Prince Hagen, The Journal of Arthur Stirling, and Manassas. The books were critically well-received but they were not commercially successful.
In 1900 Upton Sinclair rented a cabin for three months in Lake Massawippi in Quebec to write. He met his future wife Meta Fuller there.
Upton and Meta married on October 18, 1900. They had a son in 1901 named David.
In 1904 Upton Sinclair worked for seven weeks in the meatpacking plants in Chicago, in disguise. He used what he learned to write the novel The Jungle.
Upton Sinclair's novel titled The Jungle covered the lives of poor immigrants working in meat packing plants and the conditions in those plants.
The Jungle was published in 1906 and became a best seller.
Upton Sinclair took the money he earned from the novel The Jungle to found a utopian colony called the Helicon Home Colony, in Englewood, New Jersey. It was for non-Jewish, white only colony. The colony burned down with a year for unknown reasons.
In 1911 Meta left Upton for a poet named Harry Kemp.
In 1913 Upton married Mary Craig Kimbrough, also a writer.
Upton Sinclair was interested in politics, social writing, the occult, and telepathy. He wrote a book about telepathy in 1930 titled Mental Radio.
Upton Sinclair wrote the book titled Dragon's Teeth, published in 1942. He won the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for this novel which covered the Nazi's takeover of Germany in the 1930s.
Upton Sinclair's first novel, published in 1898 was titled Courtmartialed. His last novel, titled The Coal War, was published in 1976. In total he wrote almost 100 novels. He also wrote non-fiction, and dramas.
Upton Sinclair died in 1968 at the age of 90.


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