Sherwood Anderson

September 13, 1876 – March 8, 1941

2012

Novels

Windy McPherson's Son (1916)

Marching Men (1917)

Poor White (1920)

Many Marriages (1923)

Dark Laughter (1925)

Tar: A Midwest Childhood (1926, semi-autobiographical novel)

Alice and The Lost Novel (1929)

Beyond Desire (1932)

Kit Brandon: A Portrait (1936)

Short Story collections

Winesburg, Ohio (1919)

The Triumph of the Egg: A Book of Impressions From American Life in Tales and Poems (1921)

Horses and Men (1923)

Death in the Woods and Other Stories (1933)

Poetry

Mid-American Chants (1918)

A New Testament (1927)

Drama

Plays, Winesburg and Others (1937)

Nonfiction

A Story Teller's Story (1924, memoir)

The Modern Writer (1925, essays)

Sherwood Anderson's Notebook (1926, memoir)

Hello Towns! (1929, collected newspaper articles)

Nearer the Grass Roots (1929, essays)

The American County Fair (1930, essays)

Perhaps Women (1931, essays)

No Swank (1934, essays)

Puzzled America (1935, essays)

A Writer's Conception of Realism (1939, essays)

Home Town (1940, photographs and commentary)

Anderson wrote volumes of poetry, essays, memoirs and short stories, but will always be remembered as the author of the seminal collection Winesburg, Ohio. The small town of Winesburg is the setting for a series of interrelated stories told to protagonist George Willard, who, like a lot of his friends and neighbors and acquaintances, feels a suppressed desire for a better life. Though the book was published as a short story collection, many consider it one of the greatest American novels, and literary heavyweights such as Phillip Roth and Henry Miller have given nods to its influence in their own work. Anderson’s first novel, Windy McPherson’s Son, is the story of an Iowa newsboy who makes his fortune in Chicago, and in it Anderson clearly drew from his own Chicago experiences, as he did in his second novel, Marching Men. Anderson’s Chicago rooming house occupants were the models for the characters in Winesburg. Chicago was a magnet that kept pulling Anderson back—he did factory work in the city as a young adult; returned as a successful copywriter several years later; and came back after a nervous breakdown to begin work as a serious writer.