Hands

By: Sherwood Anderson

Narrated by: Christopher Ragland

Sherwood Anderson was born on 13th September 1876 in Camden, Ohio.

When his father’s business failed the family was forced to move on a regular basis before finally settling in Clyde, Ohio.

Anderson, one of 7 children, left school at 14 to take a number of jobs to help with the family finances. These were difficult years.

He moved to Chicago in search of opportunities before joining the Army for the US-Spanish War of 1898. He then entered Wittenberg Academy in Springfield, Ohio to complete his education before moving back to Chicago to take up a writing job.

In 1904 he married Cornelia Lane, her family had resources and Anderson was keen, with this family backing, to run a business.

The early years of their marriage produced 3 children but a nervous breakdown in 1907 and another in 1912, despite his success as a business entrepreneur, resulted in him abandoning his family and deciding that a literary career would be best for him.

A move back to Chicago resulted in a job in advertising, a divorce from Cornelia and marriage to Tennessee Mitchell.

That same year his first book ‘Windy McPherson’s Son’ was released and in 1919, his most famous book, ‘Winesburg, Ohio’, a collection of short stories about life in an Ohio town was released.

Anderson continued to write short stories, novels and non-fiction but his only true bestseller came with ‘Dark Laughter’. His influence on writers that followed, from Faulkner to Hemingway, was immense. He also married a further two times.

Sherwood Anderson died in in Colón, Panama, on the 8th March, 1941. He was 64. An autopsy revealed that a swallowed toothpick had resulted in peritonitis.

His headstone epitaph reads ‘Life, Not Death is the Great Adventure.’

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