The Story of Sherwood Anderson

Sherwood Anderson is probably the least critically revered and commercially successful of all of the authors studied in this course. Even Anderson was known to be a harsh judge of his own literary reputation, writing in his Memoirs, “For all my egotism I know I am but a minor figure.” That is not to say that he didn’t contribute greatly to his literary contemporaries, both by way of promotion and influence, mostly through Winesburg, Ohio, his one masterpiece, and several short stories, still considered by many to be among the finest of their genre.

Born in 1876 to Emma and Irwin Anderson in Camden, Ohio, the third of seven children, Sherwood Anderson was raised in Clyde, Ohio, which was to be the inspiration for Winesburg. Anderson’s sporadic education was often interrupted by work, having to support his family in Clyde. He left Clyde upon the death of his mother, to whom he was very close, and the resulting break-up of his family in 1895. There are many veiled reference...