The Cane mss., 1936-1957 consists of correspondence from author Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) to poet and author Melville Henry Cane (1879-1980). Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Sinclair attended the City College of New York in 1892, paying his way by publishing dime novels and articles for pulp magazines. After graduating in 1897, and studying for a bit at Columbia University, he went on to publish several successful novels. He is known in particular for The Jungle (1906), which sought to expose the impoverished and unhealthy conditions of the American meat-packing industry; the work arguably led to the 1906 Pure Food and Drug act as well as the Meat Inspection Act. Other works of note include Oil! (1927), Boston (1928), and Roman Holiday (1931). Much of his work explores industrial America from the work-class and upper middle-class perspective. In 1943, Sinclair won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Throughout his life, Sinclair also propagated socialist (and in some cases, utopian) ideals.

Melville Henry Cane attended Columbia University in 1900, and became a reporter at the New York Evening Post. While he went on to become a lawyer, his interests in poetry made him part of the literary scene alongside Upton Sinclair, Ayn Rand, and others; he also worked as legal counsel for these and other important writers, hence his friendship and repeated correspondence with Sinclair. In 1971, Cane won the Poetry Society of America's lifetime achievement award.