American novelist Upton Sinclair was born in Baltimore, Maryland and came from Southern aristocracy. When Sinclair was ten, the family moved to New York. He started to write dime novels at the age of 15 and produced fiction articles magazines to finance his studies at New York City College. In 1897 he enrolled Columbia University, determined to succeed while producing one poorly paid novel per week. In 1900 Sinclair married his first wife which he later divorced in 1911. The unhappy marriage led to the writing of Springtime and Harvest, “a tale of penniless lovers.” By 1904 Sinclair started to move toward writing realistic fiction. He had become a regular reader of the Appeal to Reason, a socialist-populist weekly. With his strong development of socialistic views and interests, Sinclair began his work The Jungle, portraying a factual account of Chicago’s meat packing industry in fiction form. From 1915 Sinclair lived in Pasadena, California and later in Buckeye, Arizona. At the age of 24 he joined the Socialist Party. In 1934 he run for the governor of California, but failed on election - as in some other elections befo

Sinclair achieved instant success with the publication of The Jungle. Not only did Sinclair accomplish to express his views on socialism, but he did so in a manner in which the masses could understand the negative effects of capitalism and “big business”. This thwarted him into the limelight and brought about new laws to protect consumers and set guidelines for businesses to follow. This then set the stage for unions to be more recognized and employment protection laws. Sinclair’s success and credibility with The Jungle was then followed by a series of books which highlight his personal political beliefs.

Upton Sinclair’s work of the Jungle has mass appeal in that it is easily engages the reader and invokes sympathy for the main character and his family. The book is very depictive and sets the mood for hope initially, then disaster. The hardships the characters endure are realistic in setting. The main point of the story unfolds gradually as the characters arrive in America and their discoveries are revealed about the economic structure of their environment. The reader then understands the place of the immigrants in society whom also capture the gruesome business of meat packaging all in the same note. The Jungle is a highly educational yet entertaining book written in a fictional format to fully understand the socioeconomic structure of industrialism and capitalism in the late 1800’s to early 1900’s which brought about new government regulati

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