Biography
Sherwood Anderson was born on September 13, 1876, into the family of a house-painter in Camden, Ohio. He worked as a newsboy, a house-painter, and a stable groom until he moved to Chicago at the age of 17. There he attended business classes at night, while having a day job as a warehouse laborer. After his military service in Cuba during the Spanish-American war, he returned to Ohio and graduated from Wittenberg College in Springfield, Ohio. His marriage didn't work, and he moved to Chicago again. There he joined the Chicago Group of writers, which also included Theodore Dreiser, Carl Sandburg, and Edgar Lee Masters. They led the so-called Chicago Literary Renessance between 1900 and 1930.
After the success of his books, "Winesburg, Ohio" (1917) and "The Triumphs of the Egg" (1921) Andersen received his first 'Dial' Award for his contribution to American Literature. He went traveling and became part of the expatriate community in Europe during the 1920s. In Paris he met Gertrude Stein, whom he much admired. He encouraged Ernest Hemingway in his writing aspirations. He also gave him a letter of recommendation to Gertrude Stein, pushing Hemingway to move to Paris from Chicago, where they met in 1921. Their friendship broke after Anderson's "Dark Laughter" (1925) prompted the satirical "Torrents of Spring", a parody of Anderson by Hemingway.
Andersen completed the "Dark Laughter" (1925) in New Orleans, where he shared an apartment with William Faulkner, who was also inspired by Anderson's works. In 1926 he moved to Marion, Virginia, where he built a home. There Anderson bought two weekly newspapers, one Republican, one Democrat, and edited both for 2 years. He was lecturing around the country and studied the labor conditions during the Depression. He wrote, " . . . Joseph Conrad said that a writer only began to live after he began to write. It pleased me to think I was after all but ten years old. Plenty of time ahead for such a young one." He died of peritonitis after swallowing a toothpick, during his private trip to Panama Canal, on March 8, 1941.
