Jessica A. Dorman

Assistant Professor, American Studies

Penn State Harrisburg

jad25@psu.edu / 717-948-6193

 

 

 

 

 

A Muckraker at Manassas:

Upton Sinclair’s Civil War Fiction

 

 

 

            A lifelong crusader for social justice, Upton Beall Sinclair died in 1968 at age ninety, the last and most prolific of the Progressive Era muckrakers. He had published his first book in 1901 and his last – some eighty titles later – in 1962. Not until 1966 did poor health finally stanch the flow of essays and letters that had long marked his presence on the American scene. Among Sinclair’s works were more than fifty novels; a verse drama titled “Hell”; a layman’s guide to fasting; attacks on organized religion, alcohol, and the American university; a treatise on psychic phenomena; four accounts of a 1934 foray into California state politics; two full-length memoirs; and biographies of O. Henry, Marie Antoinette, and Jesus.[1] Still, despite the bulk and variegation of his written output, Sinclair will ever be remembered for a single, youthful accomplishment: the publication, in 1906, of The Jungle.