The Modern Novel

Biography

Sherwood Anderson was born in 1876 in Camden, Ohio. His father sold leather harnesses. When his father’s business failed, the family moved from town to town in Ohio, finally settling in Clyde in 1884. His father started drinking heavily. Anderson took on a variety of jobs to help support his family. His mother died in 1895 and, the following year, he moved to Chicago, following his brother Karl, where he worked in a cold storage warehouse for two years, before joining the army to fight in the Spanish-American War. His regiment did not arrive in Cuba till four months after the end of fighting. After army service he again followed Karl, this time to Springfield, Ohio. After completing his studies, he became an advertising copywriter, a profession at which he was very successful. In 1904, he married the first of his four wives, the daughter of a successful businessman. He himself became a successful businessman, all the while dreaming of becoming a writer.

In November 1912, he left his home one day and was not seen for four days, turning up in a clear stage of shock, having suffered a mental breakdown. He gave up his business and returned to advertising but now was more than ever determined to give up business to become a writer. In 1914 he divorced and remarried. Two years later he published his first novel. At this time he had essentially written Winesburg, Ohio, though it would not be published till 1919. Though not really a novel but more a series of connected stories, it became his most famous work.

In 1924, he moved to New Orleans with his third wife and got to know other writers, including Faulkner (who portrayed him as Dawson Fairchild in his Mosquitoes), Hemingway and others. After divorcing and remarrying for the final time, he travelled with his fourth wife. They settled in Virginia. His writing was far less influential in this late stage. He died in Panama from peritonitis in 1941, after swallowing a toothpick.

Books about Sherwood Anderson

Kenny J. Williams: A Storyteller and a City: Sherwood Anderson’s Chicago
Walter B. Rideout: Sherwood Anderson: A Writer in America
Kim Townsend: Sherwood Anderson

Other links

Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson
Biography of Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941)