The life and work of Sherwood Anderson

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The 20th century in American literature is an important period, when new genres began to appear, as well as existing, but previously unappreciated trends developed.

US literature in the 20th century: main genres and authors

In the 1900s, literature in the US was owned by such authors as Ernest Hemingway, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Vladimir Nabokov, Ray Bradbury and others. The genres of horror literature were popular (one of the most famous writers who worked in this direction is Howard Lovecraft) and science fiction (Isaac Asimov, Robert Sheckley, Philip Dick).

In the works of this period, topics that were considered forbidden and forbidden for discussion began to be raised. Jerome Salinger's book "The Catcher in the Rye" caused a stormy resonance in society - it was removed from the libraries of American schools, which led to the opposite effect and only increased interest in the novel and its main character Holden Caulfield.

One of the American authors of the 20th century is the prose writer Sherwood Anderson. Despite the fact that his name is not so well known, his short stories and novels are today considered a model of literature and served as inspiration formany more popular authors.

Sherwood Anderson: biography

The future writer was born on September 13, 1876 in Camden, Ohio. Sherwood Anderson's father was a working-class man who worked as a saddler.

When the boy was 7 years old, the family moved to the village of Clyde. The writer later indirectly mentioned this place in his work Winesburg, Ohio.

At that time, the country was in an economic crisis. After the death of his father, Sherwood Anderson was forced to drop out of school to provide for his mother and his brothers and sisters. Later, the writer's mother died, and Sherwood Anderson went to Chicago. The Spanish-American War began, the young man was called up for service.

Returning from the army, Anderson decided to continue his education and entered Wittenberg College. After that, he began to try his hand at writing short stories and short essays. In 1910, Sherwood Anderson also began to write novels. Two years later, he suffered a severe nervous breakdown.

Throughout his life, Sherwood Anderson has been married to 4 women. The writer died in 1941 of peritonitis while traveling in South America with his last wife, Eleanor Cowperhaver.

Not many photos of Sherwood Anderson have been released. For example, the most recognizable photograph of him was taken in 1933 by Carl Van Vechten, another writer of the time.

Creativity: novels

The first large-scale work of the writer is the novel "The Son of Windy MacPherson", written in 1916. The main character is a boy living in the stateIowa.

A year later, Anderson's second work, "The Marching Man", was published, telling about the life of an ordinary worker in the industrial era. A similar idea - human nature against an industrial society striving for order and organization - is also present in the writer's most famous work, Winesburg, Ohio. The village of Clyde became the prototype of the scene, so the novel can be considered autobiographical in a sense.

Other works by Sherwood Anderson include The Poor White (1920), Dark Laughter (1925), Many Marriages (1923) and others.

Novels

A significant part of Sherwood Anderson's work is short stories, on the basis of which one can fully appreciate the talent of the writer. These short works are considered some of the finest examples of American literature of the 20th century.

and others. Ernest Hemingway, in his story "Spring Waters" (1926), parodies the techniques of other famous writers, and especially Sherwood.