The Ohio ad man who walked out of his office, wrote Winesburg, Ohio, and sent the young Hemingway to Paris with letters of introduction.
Sherwood Anderson was an American writer best known for Winesburg, Ohio, a book of linked short stories about the people of a small Midwestern town, published in 1919. He was born in Camden, Ohio, on 13 September 1876 and died in Colón, Panama, on 8 March 1941.
He came to writing late and from business. He was managing a paint factory in Elyria, Ohio, when he walked out of it in 1912, at thirty-six, in the middle of a breakdown.[1] He left the business and his marriage and went to Chicago to write.
Anderson's importance to other writers is larger than his own sales. Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner both learned from him, and both then mocked him in print. It was Anderson who gave Hemingway the letter of introduction to Gertrude Stein that opened literary Paris to him, and Anderson who got Faulkner's fir[2]st novel published.
His subject was people who cannot say what they mean. The characters in Winesburg are lonely, thwarted and full of feeling they have no words for, and Anderson wrote them in plain American speech without literary decoration.
Sherwood Anderson was born on 13 September 1876 in Camden, Ohio, the third of seven children. His father, Irwin Anderson, was a harness-maker and house painter whose business failed repeatedly; the family moved from town to town as it did.
The family finally settled in Clyde, Ohio, a small town that Anderson later used as the physical model for Winesburg. His schooling stopped early because he worked — as a newsboy, a farmhand, a stable boy, a factory labourer. His mother died when he was nineteen.
He served briefly in the Spanish-American War in 1898, went back to Ohio, and then worked in Chicago writing advertising copy, which is where he learned to write quickly and plainly for a general reader.
Anderson married Cornelia Lane in 1904 and moved to Elyria, Ohio, where he ran a paint company. He was, by ordinary measures, a success: a factory owner with a wife, three children and a house.
He had also started writing fiction in the evenings. On 28 November 1912 he walked out of his office in the middle of dictating a letter and disappeared. He was found four days later in Cleveland, disoriented and unable to say who he was.
Anderson later told the story as a deliberate escape: the businessman who walked out on business to become an artist. That version became the founding legend of his career. The contemporary evidence — four days missing, found disoriented, unable to give his own name — points instead to a genuine breakdown. What is certain is the outcome. He left the factory, left the marriage, and moved to Chicago to write.
In Chicago Anderson went back to advertising work and joined the group of writers later called the Chicago Renaissance, among them Carl Sandburg, Floyd Dell and Ben Hecht. Dell helped get his first novel into print.
He published Windy McPherson's Son in 1916 and Marching Men in 1917, both about men trying to escape ordinary American life. Neither sold. He was forty-two when Winesburg, Ohio appeared.
Winesburg, Ohio appeared in 1919. It is a set of twenty-two linked stories about the inhabitants of one small town, tied together by a young reporter, George Willard, who listens to them and finally leaves.
The people in it are what Anderson called grotesques: not monsters, but ordinary people who have each seized on one truth and been deformed by holding it too tightly. A doctor writes his thoughts on scraps of paper and never shows them to anyone. A woman waits her whole life for a man to come back. A schoolteacher who touches his pupils while he talks to them is accused of molesting them and driven out of town.
The book broke two rules at once. It refused conventional plot — the stories end without resolution — and it wrote about sex and frustration in small-town America at a time when the small town was supposed to be wholesome. Some libraries banned it. It has never gone out of print.
Anderson's sentences are short and plain, and they repeat. He wrote the way people talk when they are trying to explain something difficult: circling back, saying it again, using ordinary words.
He chose that plainness against the ornate literary English of the generation before him. It is the main reason younger writers took so much from him. Hemingway's early style — the flat declarative sentences, the refusal to explain a character's feelings — comes directly from Anderson, although Hemingway later denied owing him anything.
Anderson went to Paris in 1921 with the critic Paul Rosenfeld, in his mid-forties and newly famous. He called at 27 rue de Fleurus and met Gertrude Stein, whose Tender Buttons he had admired for years. The two became friends and correspondents, and Stein and Alice B. Toklas counted him one of the few writers who was a real friend rather than a visitor. He also met James Joyce and Sylvia Beach.
The English journalist Sisley Huddleston, who saw him in Paris, recorded Anderson arguing that the elegance of Europe concealed a poverty crueller than anything in the Ohio villages he had written about.
The influence ran in both directions. Anderson wrote a public introduction to Stein's work at a time when she was almost unpublished, and her experiments with repetition confirmed what he was already doing with plain repeated speech.
Anderson met the young Ernest Hemingway in Chicago in 1921. Hemingway was twenty-one, working as a journalist and planning to go to Italy. Anderson told him to go to Paris instead, and wrote him letters of introduction — the most important addressed to Gertrude Stein.
Those letters gave Hemingway his entry into literary Paris. Anderson also recommended Hemingway's first book to his own publisher.
In 1926 Hemingway wrote The Torrents of Spring, a short novel parodying Anderson's style, and sent it to Anderson's own publisher, Boni and Liveright. He knew the firm would have to reject a book mocking one of its own authors, and the rejection released him from his contract and let him move to Scribner's. The book ended the friendship between the two men. Hemingway's stated reason was that Anderson's recent novel Dark Laughter was bad and someone should say so.
Anderson met William Faulkner in New Orleans in 1925, when Faulkner was twenty-seven and had published nothing but poems.[3] They walked and talked for months. Anderson recommended Faulkner's first novel, Soldiers' Pay, to his publisher on the condition, as Faulkner told it, that Anderson would not have to read the manuscript first.
Later in 1926 Faulkner and his housemate William Spratling published Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles, a book of caricatures of the New Orleans art world, for which Faulkner wrote a foreword parodying Anderson's prose. Anderson took it badly and the friendship ended. Faulkner spent decades afterwards saying publicly that Anderson was the father of his generation of American writers.
Anderson published steadily through the 1920s and 1930s — novels, story collections, memoirs and essays — without ever repeating the success of Winesburg. Poor White in 1920 and the story collections The Triumph of the Egg in 1921 and Horses and Men in 1923 are the strongest of them.
In 1927 he bought two newspapers in Marion, Virginia, one Republican and one Democratic, and edited both. He married Eleanor Copenhaver in 1933, his fourth wife, and travelled with her through the mills and factories of the Depression South, writing about industrial workers.
Anderson died on 8 March 1941 in Colón, Panama, while on a goodwill trip to South America. He was sixty-four.
The cause was peritonitis. He had swallowed a toothpick, probably from a canape at a party before sailing; it perforated his intestine and the infection killed him within days.
Winesburg, Ohio changed what an American short story could be. It took the form away from plot and towards a single revealing moment, and it gave later writers permission to treat ordinary inarticulate people as serious subjects. The line from Winesburg runs to Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Carson McCullers and Raymond Carver.
Anderson's second contribution was practical. He put Hemingway on the road to Paris with a letter to Gertrude Stein and got Faulkner's first novel published. Hemingway and Faulkner both attacked him in print afterwards, and both later said he had taught them.
The letters Anderson gave Ernest Hemingway before he left for Paris were addressed to Gertrude Stein and to Sylvia Beach, and they opened the doors of literary Paris for him.
Born on 13 September in Camden, Ohio, the third of seven children of Irwin Anderson, a harness-maker and house painter whose businesses failed repeatedly.
The family settles in Clyde, Ohio, the small town Anderson later uses as the physical model for Winesburg.
His mother, Emma, dies when he is nineteen.
Moves to Chicago and works as a labourer.
Serves in the Spanish-American War with the Ohio National Guard.
Returns to Ohio, then works in Chicago writing advertising copy, learning to write plainly and fast.
Marries Cornelia Lane.
Moves to Elyria, Ohio, and takes over a mail-order paint business.
Walks out of his office in Elyria on 28 November in the middle of dictating a letter, and is found four days later in Cleveland, disoriented and unable to say who he is.
Leaves the paint business and his marriage and moves to Chicago to write.
Publishes his first novel, Windy McPherson's Son. Divorces Cornelia Lane and marries Tennessee Mitchell.
Publishes Marching Men.
Publishes Winesburg, Ohio, twenty-two linked stories about one small town. Some libraries ban it; it has never gone out of print.
Publishes Poor White.
Wins the first Dial Award for services to American literature. Travels to Paris, meets Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and Sylvia Beach.
Meets the twenty-one-year-old Ernest Hemingway in Chicago and tells him to go to Paris rather than Italy, giving him letters of introduction, including one to Gertrude Stein.
Publishes the story collection The Triumph of the Egg.
Publishes Many Marriages and the story collection Horses and Men.
Publishes A Story Teller's Story, the first of his memoirs. Moves to New Orleans.
Publishes Dark Laughter, his only commercial success. Meets William Faulkner in New Orleans and recommends Faulkner's first novel to his publisher.
Ernest Hemingway publishes The Torrents of Spring, a parody of Anderson's style, engineered to break his contract with Anderson's publisher. The friendship ends.
William Faulkner and William Spratling publish Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles, with a foreword by Faulkner parodying Anderson's prose. That friendship ends too.
Buys two newspapers in Marion, Virginia — one Republican, one Democratic — and edits both.
Divorces Tennessee Mitchell after years apart.
Publishes Beyond Desire, a novel about a Southern mill strike.
Marries Eleanor Copenhaver, his fourth wife, and travels with her through the mills and factories of the Depression South.
Publishes Puzzled America, a book of reporting on the Depression.
Publishes Kit Brandon, his last novel.
Dies on 8 March at Colón, Panama, aged sixty-four, of peritonitis caused by a swallowed toothpick that perforated his intestine.
His Memoirs are published after his death.
It’s no good. One of my books was, in fact, published in England a few years ago, but it was kept a deadly secret. Nobody knows of it except myself, the publisher, and God.
But ‘Winesburg, Ohio’ sold only a few thousand copies, and ‘A Story-Teller’s Story’ not many more.
Met · 1921
Chicago, 1921: the established author befriended the young reporter and wrote the letters of introduction — to Stein, to Beach — that opened literary Paris. Hemingway repaid the debt with a parody novel; the friendship did not survive the joke.
Met · 1921
Anderson arrived in Paris in 1921 already an admirer and became one of the few writers Stein counted a true friend — the Autobiography sets him apart, and his preface to her Geography and Plays repaid the esteem.
Met · 1921
Anderson was one of the household's favorite guests from his first 1921 visit — the Autobiography counts him among the few writers both women considered a real friend.
Met · 1924–1925
Faulkner went to New Orleans late in 1924 intending to sail for Europe and stayed six months, largely because of Anderson. In the French Quarter he joined the circle around the older novelist - the architect William Spratling, the writers Lyle Saxon, Roark Bradford and Hamilton Basso - published sketches in the Times-Picayune, and, by his biographer's account, sent his first novel manuscript to Anderson's publisher before sailing. Scholarship on Faulkner treats it as the only extended period of his life spent inside a community of intellectual peers.
The first model: the plain Midwestern sentences and buried feeling Hemingway learned from in Chicago — a debt he repaid, characteristically, by parodying it in The Torrents of Spring to break the apprenticeship in public.
Fante identified Anderson as a major stylistic influence and praised the simplicity, apparent innocence, and lack of ornamental display in his prose.
The linked-story cycle that started the American century — read 'The Book of the Grotesque' first and the town opens from there. Public domain, and free to read.
Small-town Ohio after dark — the linked stories that taught American fiction to speak plainly, from the writer who sent Hemingway to Paris.
A farm town in Ohio turns into a factory town inside twenty years, and the man whose machines did it cannot manage a conversation. Sherwood Anderson's novel of 1920.
Sherwood Anderson was an American writer, born in Ohio in 1876 and died in 1941. He is best known for Winesburg, Ohio, a 1919 collection of linked short stories about the people of a small Midwestern town.
Twenty-two linked stories about the inhabitants of one small Ohio town, connected by a young reporter named George Willard who listens to them and eventually leaves. The characters are ordinary people trapped by feelings they cannot express, and the stories end without conventional resolution.
He walked out of his office in Elyria, Ohio, on 28 November 1912, in the middle of dictating a letter, and was found four days later in Cleveland, disoriented. He later told it as a deliberate escape from business into art. The medical record suggests a genuine breakdown. He did leave the factory and the marriage, and moved to Chicago to write.
In 1921 he told the twenty-one-year-old Hemingway to go to Paris rather than Italy and gave him letters of introduction, including one to Gertrude Stein. Those letters gave Hemingway his entry into literary Paris. Hemingway later parodied Anderson in The Torrents of Spring and ended the friendship.
He died on 8 March 1941 in Colón, Panama, of peritonitis. He had swallowed a toothpick, probably from a canape at a party before sailing, and it perforated his intestine.
Winesburg, Ohio changed the American short story, moving it away from plot towards a single revealing moment and treating inarticulate ordinary people as serious subjects. Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck and later Raymond Carver all worked in the space he opened.
Influenced
The first model: the plain Midwestern sentences and buried feeling Hemingway learned from in Chicago — a debt he repaid, characteristically, by parodying it in The Torrents of Spring to break the apprenticeship in public.
Influenced
Fante identified Anderson as a major stylistic influence and praised the simplicity, apparent innocence, and lack of ornamental display in his prose.
Met · 1921
Chicago, 1921: the established author befriended the young reporter and wrote the letters of introduction — to Stein, to Beach — that opened literary Paris. Hemingway repaid the debt with a parody novel; the friendship did not survive the joke.
Met · 1921
Anderson arrived in Paris in 1921 already an admirer and became one of the few writers Stein counted a true friend — the Autobiography sets him apart, and his preface to her Geography and Plays repaid the esteem.
Met · 1921
Anderson was one of the household's favorite guests from his first 1921 visit — the Autobiography counts him among the few writers both women considered a real friend.
Met · 1924–1925
Faulkner went to New Orleans late in 1924 intending to sail for Europe and stayed six months, largely because of Anderson. In the French Quarter he joined the circle around the older novelist - the architect William Spratling, the writers Lyle Saxon, Roark Bradford and Hamilton Basso - published sketches in the Times-Picayune, and, by his biographer's account, sent his first novel manuscript to Anderson's publisher before sailing. Scholarship on Faulkner treats it as the only extended period of his life spent inside a community of intellectual peers.
The sources below include biographies, scholarly essays, interviews, and primary materials that informed this page. They reflect both the historical record and ongoing critical conversations about Sherwood Anderson and their work.
Reference entry on the Elyria breakdown, Winesburg, Ohio and his influence on younger writers.
Account of Anderson's 1921 Paris visit and his friendship and correspondence with Gertrude Stein.
Local history entry on Anderson's New Orleans years and his friendship with William Faulkner.
Reference article used for the family background, the 1912 walkout, the marriages and the circumstances of his death.
Encyclopedia entry covering the Marion, Virginia, newspaper years and the Depression reporting.
State biographical dictionary entry, used for dates and the Virginia period.
Library entry on Anderson's Ohio years and the towns behind Winesburg.
Reference entry used for the Chicago years and the publication sequence.
Biographical evidence used to verify chronology, relationships, and historical context connected to Sherwood Anderson.
First-person evidence and historical context used in preparing the Sherwood Anderson page.
First-person evidence and historical context used in preparing the Sherwood Anderson page.
Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Sherwood Anderson page.
Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Sherwood Anderson page.
These references anchor the page in the documented record and in the scholarly conversations around Sherwood Anderson. Every claim on this page traces back to one or more of the works listed here.
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