Upton Sinclair (Dictionary of World Biography: The 20th Century)
Early Life
Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr., born in Baltimore and raised there until age eight, was an only child. His father’s family, Virginia aristocrats and naval officers who sided with the Confederacy during the 1800’s, lost everything in the Civil War. Sinclair’s father, too young to fight and unable, as an adult, to adjust to his family’s downfall, failed as a businessman and succumbed to alcoholism. Dragging his drunken father from saloons would lead Sinclair to favor temperance, fostering a lifelong tendency toward reform.
His dominant, upper-middle-class...
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