After graduating in 1897, he enrolled at Columbia University to continue his studies and, using a pseudonym, wrote dime novels to support himself. At age 14, he attended the City College of New York and started selling children’s stories and humor pieces to magazines. By this time, Sinclair had already begun to develop a keen intellect and was a voracious reader, consuming the works of Shakespeare and Percy Bysshe Shelley at every waking moment. When Sinclair was 10 years old, his father moved the family from Baltimore to New York City.

The only child of an alcoholic liquor salesman and a puritanical, strong-willed mother, he was raised on the edge of poverty but was also exposed to the privileges of the upper class through visits with his mother’s wealthy family.

From birth, he was exposed to dichotomies that would have a profound effect on his young mind and greatly influence his thinking later in life. Sinclair was born in a small row house in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 20, 1878. Although many of his later works and bids for political office were unsuccessful, Sinclair earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1943 for Dragon's Teeth. Upton Sinclair was an American writer whose involvement with socialism led to a writing assignment about the plight of workers in the meatpacking industry, eventually resulting in the best-selling novel The Jungle (1906).

The jungle 1906 upton sinclair