The Jungle (Penguin American Library) - Softcover

Sinclair, Upton

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140390316 ISBN 13: 9780140390315

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1985

Synopsis

“Practically alone among the American writers of his generation, [Sinclair] put to the American public the fundamental questions raised by capitalism in such a way that they could not escape them.” —Edmund Wilson

When it was first published in 1906, The Jungle exposed the inhumane conditions of Chicago’s stockyards and the laborer’s struggle against industry and “wage slavery.” It was an immediate bestseller and led to new regulations that forever changed workers’ rights and the meatpacking industry. A direct descendant of Dickens’s Hard Times, it remains the most influential workingman’s novel in American literature.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About this title

From the Publisher

During his lifetime, Upton Sinclair authored dozens of books dealing with political and social questions, The Coal War and Oil! being two representative examples. Sinclair was also a socialist and political activist almost his entire adult life. After being massively outspent by business interests he narrowly missed being elected governor of California in 1936. The Jungle, written while he was still in his 20s, is by far his best known book.

From the Back Cover

An ardent activist, champion of political reform, novelist, and progressive journalist, Upton Sinclair is perhaps best known today for The Jungle his devastating expose of the meat-packing industry. A protest novel he privately published in 1906, the book was a shocking revelation of intolerable labor practices and unsanitary working conditions in the Chicago stockyards. It quickly became a bestseller, arousing public sentiment and resulting in such federal legislation as the Pure Food and Drug Act.-The brutally grim story of a Slavic family who emigrates to America, The Jungle tells of their rapid and inexorable descent into numbing poverty, moral degradation, and social and economic despair. Vulnerable and isolated, the family of Jurgis Rudkus struggles unsuccessfully to survive in an urban jungle.
A powerful view of turn-of-the-century poverty, graft, and corruption, this fiercely realistic American classic is still required reading in many history and literature classes. It will continue to haunt readers long after they've finished the last page."

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1985
• ISBN 10: 0140390316
• ISBN 13: 9780140390315
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 448