Upton Sinclair was born in Baltimore, September 20, 1878, and grew up there and in New York City. He began his writing career as a teenager, producing pseudonymous boys' adventure stories for pulp magazine publishers, as well as writing jokes for humor magazines. Between 1900 and 1905 Sinclair published five novels, but it wasn't until The Jungle, published in 1906, that he became an internationally known author. The success of this novel, which deals with the appalling conditions in the meat packing plants in Chicago, not only made Sinclair a rich man but also provided the final impetus for passage of the pure food law of 1906. With the proceeds from the sale of the novel Sinclair set up a communal living experiment called Helicon Hall in New Jersey. A fire just one year later destroyed everything and left Sinclair and his young family impoverished once again.

Following a tumultuous separation and divorce, Sinclair married Mary Craig Kimbrough and in 1914 they took up permanent residence in Southern California. From 1917 through the early 1940s Sinclair himself published virtually all of his books and pamphlets although many of the major works were published simultaneously by New York houses. Although one of America's best known Socialists, Sinclair succeeded in winning the Democratic party nomination for governor of California in 1934 and ran on his "EPIC" (End Poverty in California) platform. He lost the election but many of the ideas he expressed during the campaign affected advisors and officials in Roosevelt's administrations and later found expression in national legislation. In 1940 Sinclair published the first of the best-selling Lanny Budd series, volume three of which, Dragon's Teeth, won the Pulitzer prize for literature in 1943. The eleven volumes were wide-ranging historical novels presenting the political history of the Western World from 1913-1950, and they were immensely popular. After the death of his third wife in December 1967, Sinclair moved to a nursing home in New Jersey to be near his son, David, and family. He died peacefully, November 25, 1968.