Binding of Windy McPherson’s Son, Anderson’s first book. [[Item 1]]
Illustrations
| Portrait of Sherwood Anderson | [Facing title-page] |
| Manuscript Page from Winesburg, Ohio | [Page 11] |
| Binding of Windy McPherson’s Son | [Facing Opposite] |
| Winesburg, Ohio Title-page, First Edition | [Page 21] |
Preface
Although an examination of Sherwood Anderson’s biography would reveal various careers—that of laborer, manager of a paint factory, advertising writer, short story writer, novelist, poet, essayist, and newspaper editor—it is as a writer of short stories that he has made his most significant contribution to American letters. His concentration on form rather than plot was a key factor in liberating the American short story from the confining techniques of writers in the genteel tradition who were in vogue when Anderson was writing his first novel, Windy McPherson’s son (1916).
Anderson’s first important work, and possibly his finest, was Winesburg, Ohio (1919), a collection of stories about the inhabitants of a small town who did not fit into the accepted pattern of community life. In these sketches his concern was with the failures rather than with the successful. Anderson told their tales with compassion and sympathy, and, through his characters’ maimed or suppressed emotions, he lent significance to neglected aspects of life in an era of respectability, easy success, and commercialism. His succeeding stories and novels evolved from this theme, which, with his experiment in form, enabled the American short story writers of the following decades to reach heights of subtlety and psychological penetration.
The principal repository of Anderson’s manuscripts is the Newberry Library in Chicago. Placed in the Library by the writer’s widow, Mrs. Eleanor Copenhaver Anderson, this collection, numbering some 16,690 items, contains his extensive correspondence with publishers, editors, artists, and notable writers of the twentieth century, among them Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, H. L. Mencken, Theodore Dreiser, and Thomas Wolfe (see [item 753]). In addition to Anderson’s numerous short stories and articles, the collection contains the manuscripts of many of his most important writings: Winesburg, Ohio, Kit Brandon, Dark laughter, Many marriages, and A new testament. His diaries for the period, 1936-1941, as well as scrapbooks of reviews and clippings, are also included. It is this collection of papers which Anderson’s future biographers and critics must consult and examine to fully assess his note-worthy influence on and contribution to American fiction.