Sherwood
Anderson was born in Camden, Ohio on September 13, 1876. He was the third
of seven children born to Irwin and Emma Anderson. Due to Irwin’s job
as a hardness maker, the Andersons traveled from one small town to the next
for the first eight years of Sherwood’s life (1).
It was in 1884 when the family settled into Clyde, Ohio; the town which would
later be the inspiration behind Winesburg, Ohio. Clyde, Ohio seemed
to be destined to become the next Columbus or Toledo, but the family's arrival
to Clyde brought mixed emotions to the young Sherwood.(2)
It was the first time that his family stayed in one area for a significant
period of time, but it also signified a new role of Anderson in his family.
His family was expecting the fifth child and Irwin Anderson’s business
practices put the family into financial strain. The family was one of the
poorest in Clyde and Sherwood soon had to take on some of the economic burden.
(3) Young Anderson was soon nicknamed “Jobby”
because of all of the jobs that the boy took on. (4).
The
hardships that the boy experienced growing up working and not having a strong
father figure in his life, harbored some resentment toward Irwin Anderson.
In fact, Sherwood did not feel that he even had a relationship with his father.
In his memoirs, Anderson recalls his childhood memories and says, ““I
thought he was terrible. I didn’t see how my mother could stand it….
I had got to hating him.” (5) When Sherwood
was 19, his mother died of tuberculosis and 
his
father could not keep the family together any longer. Anderson left for Chicago
with his brother and loved the variant of the big city. Family life was still
hard to deal with, so
Anderson decided to leave everyone for a while and signed up for the National
Guard, just under three years of arriving to Chicago. (6)
When he returned, Anderson decided to head to Springfield, Ohio in order to
finish high school. Soon after graduation, with a help of his friend Marco
Morrow, Sherwood was able to return to Chicago with a job at an advertising
firm. (7)
Sherwood
and his siblings
During
Anderson’s second escape to Chicago, he met and fell in love with Cornelia
Lane of Toledo. They married in 1904 and two years later they headed to Cleveland
where he accepted the job as the president of the United Factories Company.
After the birth of Cornelia and Sherwood’s first son, Robert in 1907,
Anderson decided he needed to make more money to support his family. Anderson
started up his own company and by 1908, Anderson Manufacturing Company was
a success. (8) Around the same time, his passion for
literature increased. Anderson desperately tried to fulfill both his financial
obligations to his family and his person obsession with 
literature,
but the battle was difficult. Sherwood was also having trouble in his marriage.
Anderson was quite the lady’s man and the marriage did not slow him
down. On his business trips, “Anderson would slip away from them [business
meetings], into an alley, for his own quick good time, or check into a hotel
under an assumed name.” (9) The tension between
his personal gratifications, his troubled marriage and family obligations
all came to a break down in November of 1912.
After
his recovery, Anderson left the business world and headed back to
writing in Chicago. With the help of friends, a publisher soon picked up Sherwood.
Cornelia stayed with the children in Ohio until the house sold and then spent
the springs and summers with her sister in Michigan and the winters and falls
in the Ozarks, where Anderson would come and visit on weekends. In 1916, Cornelia
and Sherwood decided to get divorced, three days after it was finalized Anderson
married Tennessee Mitchell.(10) While his family life
was less than ideal, his career was beginning to take off. His first novel
Windy McPherson’s Son was published that same year. The next
year he publishes 
Marching
Men. Finally in 1919, Anderson’s finest literary work was created,
Winesburg, Ohio. Creating this novel was a battle between Anderson
and his publishers because they could not see the complexity or significance
of such a novel. After a brief battle and horrendous reviews, Winesburg,
Ohio was released to the public. While the shocking novel may have not
been appreciated during Anderson’s life, the impact of the novel had
great influence on other writers such as Faulkner and Hemingway, in addition
to setting a new standard for Midwestern literature.
Through Anderson’s memoirs, readers learn about how almost every single
one of his stories or characters come from people that he knew personally
or that he had encountered. Winesburg, Ohio was no exception. During the mid-twenties,
almost all of Anderson’s work was biographical, or at least semi biographical.
(12) In 1924, after divorcing Tennessee, he married
Elizabeth Prall. This marriage only lasted until 1928. Anderson then met Eleanor
Copenhaver that same year, but does not marry her until 1933. His travels
with her around the south and around the world were represented in Anderson’s
stories through the 1930’s. Eleanor Copenhaver had inspired Anderson’s
interest in the working girl in southern factories, which was the motivation
behind writing his novel Perhaps Woman.(13)
Anderson stayed with her until he died in Colon, Panama on March 8, 1941.