Sherwood Anderson on a Human Being's Well of Thinking

"There is within every human being a deep well of thinking over which a heavy iron lid is kept clamped."

-- Sherwood Anderson

Sherwood Anderson's Biography

Sherwood Anderson, (born September 13, 1876, Camden, Ohio, U.S.—died March 8, 1941, Colon, Panama), author who strongly influenced American writing between World Wars I and II, particularly the technique of the short story. His writing had an impact on such notable writers as Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, both of whom owe the first publication of their books to his efforts. His prose style, based on everyday speech and derived from the experimental writing of Gertrude Stein, was markedly influential on the early Hemingway—who parodied it cruelly in Torrents of Spring (1926) to make a clean break and become his own man.... His best work is generally thought to be in his short stories, collected in Winesburg, Ohio, The Triumph of the Egg (1921), Horses and Men (1923), and Death in the Woods (1933). Also valued are the autobiographical sketches A Story Teller’s Story (1924), Tar: A Midwest Childhood (1926), and the posthumous Memoirs (1942; critical edition 1969). A selection of his Letters appeared in 1953.

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Biography sourced from Encyclopedia Britannica. Featured image: "Sherwood Anderson, 1923," by Alfred Stieglitz. (Source: Art Institute Chicago)