Sherwood Anderson—Biography

Background: Sherwood Anderson was born in Camden, Ohio on 13th September, 1876, the third of seven children.  His father’s business failed and the family was forced to move several times, the last of which landed them in Clyde, Ohio.  Sherwood’s father Erwin drank heavily and died before Anderson turned twenty.  As a result of his father’s inability to support the family, Sherwood took odd jobs to help out, leaving school at 14.  He moved to Chicago and took a job as a manual labourer until the turn of the century, when he enlisted in the Army.  Though he was called up during the Spanish-American War, he never saw action.  After the war, he enrolled at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Illinois and eventually, became a copywriter.

Life: In 1904, he married Cornelia Lane, the daughter of a wealthy Ohio family.  They had three children.  The family lived in Cleveland and Elyria, Ohio, where Anderson was involved in a number of business ventures, most especially as a manager.  However, in November, 1912, Anderson suffered a nervous breakdown and disappeared for four days.  He abandoned his family and his job in pursuit of ‘the writer’s life’.  He returned to Chicago and took a job with a publishing company and, in 1916, Anderson divorced Lane and remarried, a woman called Tennessee Mitchell.  He would divorce her in 1922 to marry Elizabeth Prall two years later, then divorce Prall and, in the late 1920s, marry for a fourth time, this time to Eleanor Copenhaver.  Copenhaver seemed to be the woman for whom Anderson had been looking; they travelled and studied together and in 1932, Anderson dedicated his novel Beyond Desire to her.

Anderson’s personal life affected at least a portion of his total output.  A year after his third marriage, he published Many Marriages, the themes of which would influence his later writings.  Critically, Many Marriages was well-received and was counted by F. Scott Fitzgerald as one of Anderson’s finest novels.

Sherwood Anderson died 8th March 1941 while travelling in Panama.  The cause of death was listed as peritonitis, a condition he developed after having accidentally swallowed a toothpick embedded in a martini olive. 

Career: Between 1916 and 1919, Anderson published two novels, Windy McPherson’s Son and Marching Men.  He began writing his most famous work, Winesburg, Ohio in 1919.  Despite the success of his short stories, he continued writing novels, producing Poor White in 1920.  It was a successful novel and encouraged him to continue.  His 1925 novel Dark Laughter, about the author’s life and experiences in Jackson Square, New Orleans, was his only best seller.  1926’s Tar: A Mid-West Childhood is a semi-autobiographical novel which is frequently cited in academic circles and in comparative literature studies. 

The 1930s saw a change in Sherwood Anderson’s style, more of a maturity than anything.  Though much less influential in his later years, the novels of this period contained some of the writer’s finest lines of prose.  Death in the Woods, Puzzled America (a book of essays), and Kit Brandon (1936) were composed during this period.  1940’s Home Town was an extensive essay which continued Anderson’s fascination with small towns and their peculiarities. 

Anderson has long been cited as an influence upon some of the brightest and best American writers.  Among these are names such as William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck and Henry Miller.  Following this tradition, the Sherwood Anderson family established in 1988 a prize to help writers continue to practice their craft.  Annually, the foundation awards $15,000 to a writer of merit they hand-select.

Interestingly enough ... Sherwood Anderson found it difficult to finish writing a short story or novel if he had let it alone for a period of time. He could not finish the chapter (or whatever it was he had been working on) until he could return himself mentally to the exact state he had been in when he began writing. He would often write, rewrite and rewrite again a short story that he'd set aside because he remained unconvinced that he had recaptured its spirit. This is the reason that he would try hard to force himself to finish the whole short story, chapter or scene in one sitting, rather than succumb to "writer's block" and leave it alone for a while.