Sherwood Anderson - (1876-1941)
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Sycamore High School
Cincinnati, Ohio
I. His Childhood
What author influenced some of the most influential authors of all time such as Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, and Wolfe? That writer was Mr. Sherwood
Anderson. He was born on September 13, 1876 in Camden, Ohio, the third of six children to Emma and Irwin Anderson. During the first years of his life, the
family moved from village to village in Ohio. Due to Irwin's occupation as a harness maker it was necessary to be in constant search of a better paying opportunity, but their search
ended when they finally settled in Clyde, Ohio (Hodgins 582). In his biography of 
Sherwood Anderson, Rex Burbank said "Clyde offered streams for
fishing and swimming, beech woods for loafing and dreaming, and sprawling cornfields for the bucolic pleasures and furtive adventures of the small-town lad"(23). Growing up, however,
Anderson found many flaws with the town. "Clyde lay stagnant between an exhausted agrarian era and a nascent industrial age…old men, young men, already failures in life-inspired ones,
who from the beginning accepted failure-embraced it" (Burbank 23). Anderson would later express all this frustration and disappointment of a small town in his highly successful novel, Winesburg, Ohio.
As a child, Sherwood had to take many jobs to support his family. He even earned the nickname "Jobby" on account of all the odd jobs he had taken. The extent of his jobs ranged from being a paperboy to even earning a living by means of a racetrack swipe (Hodgins 582). Throughout his childhood years, Anderson was always angry with his father for putting the family in such a destitute position (Burbank 24). He felt sorry for his mother calling her "a symbol of broken dreams, of a life spent in a dreary routine of washing and cooking and childbearing" (Anderson qtd. in Burbank 27). After his mother's death, Mr. Anderson moved to Chicago and began work as a stock handler in a warehouse. Soon, he enlisted in Company I of the Sixteenth Ohio National Guard Regiment to fight in the Spanish-American war. The only reason he had for doing this was to get away from the hardships of life (Sherwood Unofficial).
Sherwood Anderson (Sherwood Anderson Collection)
II. His Adult Life
After coming home from the war, Anderson did not go back to his job in Chicago, but enrolled in the Wittenberg Academy in Springfield, Ohio. This was his only formal education outside of high school. The teachers, writers, and artists at this school created a truly intellectual setting for Mr. Anderson to grow (Sherwood Unofficial). "He was fascinated by the clash of ideas, and, though there is no indication that they permanently influenced him, he seems to have been impressed for the first time"(Burbank 29). After leaving Wittenberg, he worked at the Crowell firm in Chicago, but then he transferred to the Frank B. White Agency. His main job at both of these agencies was as an advertising writer (Burbank 30). After marrying Cornelia Lane of Toledo in 1904, they moved to Cleveland where Anderson became the head of a mail order company, the United Factories Company. Pretty soon, Sherwood Anderson had set up his own business in Elyria, Ohio. He sold solid roof cement and paint by mail order, and he was given the nickname "roof-fix man." For once in his life, he did not have to worry about money and trying to pay the bills. Ms. Lane and Mr. Anderson and their three children were living a seemingly flawless life (Burbank 32).
III. The Breakdown
A change began to appear in Anderson as he became "sick of responsibilities and a growing debt" (Hodgins 582). Then, in 1912, Sherwood Anderson experienced a complete breakdown. "This was a result of the inexorable demands of his inner nature for freedom from pressures and routines of business and family life" (Burbank 33). He then proceeded to leave Elyria, his children, his wife, and his business behind and go to Chicago in search of a new life (Sherwood Unofficial). Burbank says in his biography of Mr. Anderson that after living in Chicago for a short period of time, he filed for divorce from Cornelia, and "he let his hair grow, wore strips of bright-colored cloth in place of a neck tie"(37). To the people that knew him, he seemed strange and isolated. In his memoirs, Anderson said that he did this " to escape out of old minds, old thoughts put into my head by others, into my own thoughts, my own feelings" (279).
Sherwood Anderson made many new friends in Chicago, among who were Theodore Dreiser and Carl Sandburg. These new intellectual friends encouraged Anderson to write about his "experiences in small Ohio towns" (Hodgins 582). He released Windy McPherson's Son in 1916. Marching Men, Mid American Chants, a book of poetry, and then his best-selling novel, Winesburg, Ohio, followed this book. Also, during this time he married twice and divorced once (Sherwood Unofficial). After a few years in the spotlight, acquiring great fame, Anderson came to the realization that "if you acquire fame people begin to put you outside themselves" (Anderson qtd. in Burbank 43). So, then Mr. Anderson packed up his bags and left the city. He moved into a small town where he became the editor of the paper and known as a country gentleman (Burbank 43). He continued to write, but " he tried hard to live as he believed men must if life is to have any value"(Burbank 47). On March 8, 1941, en route to South America, Sherwood Anderson died of peritonitis, which is the inflammation of the abdominal membrane (Burbank 47). He left behind not only family, friends, and loved ones, but "eleven hundred manuscripts, including unpublished fiction and journals, and over 12,000 letters written to and by most of the artistic and intellectual leaders of the twentieth century" (White 4).
Sherwood Anderson (
Sherwood Anderson Collection)
IV. The Beginning of his Writing
When first beginning to write, Sherwood Anderson struggled to find originality in his ideas and the words he wrote down. In his Memoirs, when commenting about his first novel he said, "I felt that the book was largely a result of my reading of other novelists. I hadn't as yet turned directly to the life about me. It was an immature book, not completely felt, full of holes and bad spots" (263). In a 1936 interview, Anderson said about writing, "To find the story is not difficult. Telling it solidly and well and with some grace is another matter" (qtd. in Modlin 1). He was not able to find his own voice; this inspired him to go searching in his heart for memories from the past. This search improved his writing and allowed him to discover "that in my writing I could throw an imagined figure against a background of some of my own experiences" (Anderson Memoirs 266). After making this discovery, Anderson wanted to write a novel, but this time he wanted to tell a story of a town and what happened to it when factories came. He would go on to call this novel, Poor White . Through this novel, he truly wanted to express to the world how old patterns of life are broken up and how life in a small town is changed when industry rolls in (268).
VI. The Inspiration and writing of Winesburg, Ohio
Anderson did not choose to write his novels in odd places, but his renowned
novel, Winesburg, Ohio, was written in an old house in Chicago. "I sat at the window, and it seemed to me like each person who passed along the street below, under the light, shouted his secret up to me" (Anderson Memoirs
279). He sat there and wrote like a mad man, but he did not finish until a couple months later.
The cover of Winesburg, OH (American Literature Classics)
Anderson chose to write this novel in separate stories, writing one in each sitting. He generally wrote each story during a one-week interval. It was a triumph for Anderson, for it was the first time he was able to go "truly into others, others met in the streets, in the office, and others remembered out of my childhood in an American small town" (Anderson Memoirs 279). Through writing this novel, Sherwood Anderson received something more than money or fame, "for the first time I found my own vocation. Getting for the first time belief in self," he said in his memoirs (280). After finding his voice, Anderson had all the self-confidence he needed. In his radio interview with Charles Modlin he said, "The writer's adventures are never ending. There are so many people, so many stories. Sometimes I wish I could be sure of living three hundred years. There are enough stories packed away in me now to keep me writing day and night for at least that long" (Modlin 2).
VII. Influences on his Writing
Ms. Gertrude Stein, author of the novel, Three Lives, greatly impacted Mr. Anderson's life and writing. "I admire her because she, in her
person, represents something sweet and healthy in our American life" (Anderson Notebook 49). He was particularly impressed by the way she worked with her words. "She is laying word against word,
relating sound to sound, feeling for the taste, the smell, the rhythm of the individual word," he said in his notebook (49). Anderson later revealed that Ms. Stein had heavily influenced the style with which he
wrote (Burbank 37). Mr. Ring Lardner, author of "I'm a Fool," was another whom 
Sherwood Anderson admired for his play on words (Burbank 40).
Anderson said in his notebook, " perhaps one who is doing more than any other American to give new force to the words of our everyday life" (50).
Anderson's Manuscripts (It is not disclosed what these scribbles are
the beginnings of)
(Sherwood Anderson Collection)
Paul Rosenfeld, an astute Eastern critic influenced Anderson in a different way, " [Rosenfeld] gave him critical guidance and encouragement at a time when he was in need of both assurance and authoritative judgment" (Burbank 40). After Anderson's death in 1941, his memoirs were left unfinished, and Rosenfeld went through and filled in as much information as he could (Burbank 41). In his Notebook, Anderson calls Rosenfeld, "An American writer actually unashamed of being fine and sensitive in his work…he has really freed himself from both the high and the low brows and has made of himself a real aristocrat among writers of prose" (52). Author Sinclair Lewis impressed Anderson with the style and unique words with which he wrote (Burbank 45). "In Babbit there are moments when the characters begin to think and feel a little; life flits, like a lantern carried by a night watchman past the window of a factory as one stands waiting and watching in a grim street on a night of December" (55).
VIII. His Works
Windy McPherson's Son, 1916
Marching Men, 1917
Mid-American Chants, 1918
Winesburg Ohio, 1919
Poor White, 1920
The Triumph of the Egg, 1921
Horses and Men, 1923
Many Marriages, 1923
A Story Teller's Story, 1924
Dark Laughter, 1925
The Modern Writer, 1925
Sherwood Anderson's Notebook, 1926
Tar: A Midwest Childhood, 1926
A New Testament, 1927
Alice and the Lost Novel, 1929
Hello Towns!, 1929
Nearer the Grass Roots, 1929
The American County Fair, 1930
Perhaps Women, 1931
Beyond Desire, 1932
Death in the Woods, 1933
No Swank, 1934
Puzzled America, 1935
Kit Brandon, 1936 Plays,
Winesburg and Others 1937
Home Town, 1940
Sherwood Anderson's Memoirs, 1942
The Sherwood Anderson Reader, 1947
The Portable Sherwood Anderson, 1949
Letters of Sherwood Anderson, 1953
Sherwood Anderson's Short Stories, 1962
Return to Winesburg, 1967
The Buck Fever Papers, 1971
Correspondence Sherwood Anderson/Gertrude Stein, 1972
The Writer's Book 2, 1975
France and Sherwood Anderson, 1976
Sherwood Anderson's Early Writings, 1989
Anderson's Secret Love Letters, 1991
Certain Things Last: Selected short stories of Sherwood Anderson, 1992
IX. Critical Reviews
Judy Jo Small says in a review of Anderson's Southern Odyssey "Everywhere in this volume, as in everything he writes is his abiding respect for humble people engaged in the age-old struggle for life (qtd. in Modlin). Christopher MacGowan commented on Mr. Anderson's position as a commentator in America positively saying, "he seeks to ameliorate—to try to understand, as much as possible, and accept, and to bring together individuals and groups, to realize their commonalties within what is for him the universal cultural conditions of America's people" (MacGowan qtd. in Modlin). "...A work of love, an attempt to break down the walls that divide one person from another, and also, in its own fashion, a celebration of small-town life in the lost days of good will and innocence" (Cowlay qtd. in Baker) Malcolm Cowlay said about Winesburg, Ohio. The majority of reviews on Anderson's works are positive and praising, but in a few cases the criticism is harsh. Hemingway once stated "many people think that Anderson cannot write" (qtd. in Sherwood Unofficial ). He also called Anderson's Many Marriages a "poor book" and "disparaged Anderson's pretensions to erudition and his 'banal idea of things'" (qtd. in Sherwood Unofficial).
www.urich.edu/~journalm/eagle.html
This particle site contains not only critical reviews of Anderson by such people as Ray Lewis and Judy Jo Small, but also interesting commentary by friends of his.
http://athena.english.vt.edu/~appalach/writersA/anderson.html
In this site is a brief biography of Anderson mixed in with reviews from various critics.
The Norton Critical Edition of Winesburg, Ohio contains eight critical reviews of the novels among which are reviews by William Faulkner and H.L. Mencken.
The Achievement of Sherwood Anderson: Essays in Criticism
By: Ray L. Lewis
This book offers many reviews of Anderson's works by his friends, fellow authors, and critics. It also contains a deeper insight into his life by those who knew him best.
X. Interviews
www.richmond.edu/~journalm/radio.html
An interview/radio appearance with Sherwood Anderson and Amelia Earhart on October 2, 1936, nine months before her death.
Three Literary Men by August William Derleth
This book contains one interview with Sherwood Anderson. It can be located at the Ohio State University library.
The major repository of Anderson's papers are located at the Newberry Library in Chicago.
XI. Interesting Links
http://www.swanva.net/sherwood.htm
A page that contains an article by a citizen of Smyth County, Virginia, about Anderson's stint as the editor of a weekly newsletter while living there.
If you run into any problems while researching, you can contact Mr. William Schuck at . He is the head of the Sherwood Anderson Project and can offer you very useful information.
http://andersonproject.winesburg.com/
This is a site which contains many useful links. One I found useful was the link to the Clyde Public library which is located in Mr. Anderson's hometown.
XII. Works Cited
American Literature Classics, A Chapter a Day. 1 Mar.2001.
www.americanliterature.com/WO/WOINDX.HTML.
Anderson, Sherwood. Sherwood Anderson's Memoirs. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1942.
Anderson, Sherwood. Sherwood Anderson's Notebook. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1926.
Baker, Stephanie. Sherwood Anderson. 15 Feb. 2001.
http://athena.english.vt.edu/~appalach/writersA/anderson.html.
Burbank, Rex. Sherwood Anderson. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1964.
Hodgins, Francis., et al. Adventures in American Literature. Orlando: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, Publishers.
Modlin, Charles. "Sherwood Anderson's Radio Appearance with Amelia Earhart."
Winter 2000. 24 Feb. 2001. www.richmond.edu/~journalm/radio.html.
Sherwood Anderson Collection. Virginia Tech University Library. 19 Feb. 2001.
http://spec.lib.vt.edu/spec/anderson/pictures.htm.
Sherwood Anderson Unofficial Homepage. 13 Feb. 2001.
www.cas.uc.edu/~toennis/sherwood_anderson/home.htm.
White, Ray Lewis. The Achievement of Sherwood Anderson. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1966.
This essay was submitted by a student of Breen Reardon, an English teacher at Sycamore High School in Cincinnati.