Winesburg, Ohio

Through twenty-three connected short stories, the author looks into the lives of the inhabitants of a small town in the American heartland. These psychological portraits of the sensitive and imaginative townsfolk are seen through the eyes of a young reporter/narrator, George Willard. Their stories are about loneliness and alienation, passion and virginity, wealth and poverty, thrift and profligacy, carelessness and abandon. With Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson charted a new direction in American fiction, evoking with his simple and intense style the quiet moments of epiphany in the lives of ordinary men and women. "Winesburg, Ohio, when it first appeared, kept me up a whole night in a steady crescendo of emotion." -- Hart Crane "[A] timeless book of connected short stories about the brave, cowardly, and altogether realistic inhabitants of an imaginary American town." -- AudioFile "...considered to be one of the forerunners of modern fiction...[a] ground-breaking masterpiece..." -- Midwest Book Review Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) was born in Camden, Ohio. Largely self-educated, he worked at various trades while writing fiction in his spare time. For several years he worked as a copywriter in Chicago where he became part of the Chicago literary renaissance. As an author, he strongly influenced American short-story writing, and his best-known book, Winesburg, Ohio (1919), brought him recognition as a leader in the revolt against established literary traditions.