{"storymap": {"call_to_action": true, "call_to_action_text": "", "map_as_image": false, "map_type": "zoomify", "slides": [{"date": "", "location": {"line": true}, "media": {"caption": "Sherwood Anderson at Lake Chateaugay, Merrill, New York, 1917. Sherwood Anderson papers, Newberry Library", "credit": "", "url": "//uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/bc2171fd2dc65da8b99c6c013d2dc670/sherwood/_images/anderson.jpg"}, "text": {"headline": "Sherwood Anderson, circa 1924-1940", "text": "

A novelist, essayist, and poet, Sherwood Anderson is best known for Winesburg, Ohio (1917), his collection of interrelated short stories set in a fictional midwestern town. With its examination of small-town inhabitants \"adrift on the flatlands of the Midwest, each of them in their own way struggling \u2014 and failing \u2014 to locate meaning, personal connection and love amid the town\u2019s elm-shaded streets,\" Anderson's writing captured societal unease as America shifted from an agrarian to an industrial economy.

Personal connection didn't seem to be a problem for the author, whose intimate correspondence with friends and family tracks his four marriages, mental health struggles, and growing interest in Communist ideology and workers' rights. Join his emotional and geographic journey via these excerpts, courtesy of our volunteers at Newberry Transcribe.

Manuscript excerpts from: Sherwood Anderson letters, 1913-1941. Newberry Library | Map: Touraide prepared especially for Miss Jessie Weiseman: Conoco official road map, United States, 1939. Newberry Library

This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services [CAGML-247293-OMLS-20].
"}, "type": "overview"}, {"date": "", "location": {"lat": 71.39916455383504, "line": true, "lon": 4.130859375, "zoom": 12}, "media": {"caption": "Tennessee Mitchell Anderson 2nd Wife of Sherwood Berton Anderson of Winesburg Ohio. Jeannette's Take on Life", "credit": "", "url": "//uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/bc2171fd2dc65da8b99c6c013d2dc670/sherwood/_images/Tennessee Mitchell Anderson May 24, 1929.jpg"}, "text": {"headline": "Too bad for Tennessee, 1924", "text": "Chicago, Sept. 20, 1924

Tennessee is pretty well. It's too damn bad she has to go to work teaching because she married me who won't settle down and support a woman as a respectable man should.

--View this page or all pages in this set at Newberry Digital Collections"}}, {"date": "", "location": {"lat": 57.20771009775018, "line": true, "lon": 36.5625, "zoom": 12}, "media": {"caption": "Sherwood Anderson with children, circa 1909. Sherwood Anderson papers, Newberry Library", "credit": "", "url": "//uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/bc2171fd2dc65da8b99c6c013d2dc670/sherwood/_images/20221213_150504.jpg"}, "text": {"headline": "I hate Christmas, 1930", "text": "Marion, Virginia, Dec. 25, 1930:

I hate Christmas...

I went to Pat Pallin's new house. They have a 2 year old child - little Pat. Some one, Henry Staley perhaps, have given him a mechanical toy. He went up to it and kicked it to smitherines.

Just then - I had to hold myself back. I said nothing. I wanted to say - \"kick the goddam thing again.\"

--View this page or all pages in this set at Newberry Digital Collections

"}}, {"date": "", "location": {"lat": 57.11238500793404, "line": true, "lon": 36.6064453125, "zoom": 12}, "media": {"caption": "Ben Hecht and Sherwood Anderson, circa 1918. Fanny Butcher papers, Newberry Library", "credit": "", "url": "//uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/bc2171fd2dc65da8b99c6c013d2dc670/sherwood/_images/nby_chicago_5824_large.jpg"}, "text": {"headline": "A dead bleak place, 1931", "text": "Marion, Virginia, Feb. 2, 1931:

I have been in a dead bleak place again. They are like bad air pockets. Down and down you sink. I've never been able to figure them out. There is a kind of flight you try to maintain. How difficult it is...

I need man's friendship too, of a kind I can't get here and that I imagine you can't get there. It leaves a big hole, not having it.

--View this page or all pages in this set at Newberry Digital Collections
"}}, {"date": "", "location": {"lat": 57.136239319177434, "line": true, "lon": 36.5625, "zoom": 12}, "media": {"caption": "Eleanor Copenhaver, circa 1930s. Sherwood Anderson papers, Newberry Library", "credit": "", "url": "//uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/bc2171fd2dc65da8b99c6c013d2dc670/sherwood/_images/20221214_093728.jpg"}, "text": {"headline": "Something personal, 1932", "text": "Apr. 25, 1932:

There is something personal. There is a woman here with whom I am in love.

It is not known that I am in love with her. She is a working woman, concerned now with women and girls in factories. At present she has a job in the industrial department of a philanthropic organization. She is about 35, rather small and dark, with a big head, like your own child and with eyes like your child.

--View this page or all pages in this set at Newberry Digital Collections

"}}, {"date": "", "location": {"lat": 72.7249578420239, "line": true, "lon": 68.6865234375, "zoom": 12}, "media": {"caption": "The advancing proletariat, circa 1920s. Franklin and Penelope Rosemont collection of IWW publications and ephemera, Newberry Library", "credit": "", "url": "//uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/bc2171fd2dc65da8b99c6c013d2dc670/sherwood/_images/case_hd_8055_i4_r67_box_001_fl_001_01_001.jpg"}, "text": {"headline": "The great evil, 1932", "text": "New York City, May 1932:

I'm becoming more and more a communist. I think it must be coming nearer - an inevitable thing...

I'm pretty sure money is the great evil. You get it and it separates you - at once from life. We are all cramped, hurt, all the time, by what goes on. How can art flourish. I'll tell you Charles, if the Russians pull it off - you'll see - some day a flowering there. Think of a whole nation of people who can be sure of work - the old and the sick and the weary decently taken care of - the land belonging to the state - the factories belonging to the state... Its worth fighting for - the beginning of it. It's worth any price.

--View this page or all pages in this set at Newberry Digital Collections
"}}, {"date": "", "location": {"lat": 64.51064316846676, "line": true, "lon": -26.8505859375, "zoom": 12}, "media": {"caption": "Sherwood Anderson in truck, Arizona, 1936. Sherwood Anderson papers, Newberry Library", "credit": "", "url": "//uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/bc2171fd2dc65da8b99c6c013d2dc670/sherwood/_images/anderson-truck.jpg"}, "text": {"headline": "In love with America, 1933", "text": "Kansas City, Missouri, Jan. 20, 1933:

I am writing from Kansas City - from a little rather tough hotel, full of little actors, prize fighters - auto salesmen out of work and whores - also out of work...

I got into the car and lit out - to drift for a time. I had a grand ride, over mountains and rivers and out onto the prairies - crossed the Cumberland, Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. It rained, the wind blew, the sun shone. Again I got in love with America. What a land - O Charles - if we can but begin to love it and treat it devoutly some day. It is so violent and huge and gorgeous and rich and willing to be loved...

--View this page or all pages in this set at Newberry Digital Collections

"}}, {"date": "", "location": {"lat": 57.468589192089354, "line": true, "lon": 26.9384765625, "zoom": 12}, "media": {"caption": "A merry Christmas, 1908. Bryan L. Bossier postcard collection, Newberry Library", "credit": "", "url": "//uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/bc2171fd2dc65da8b99c6c013d2dc670/sherwood/_images/Bossier_000384_01_01.jpg"}, "text": {"headline": "A sad Christmas, 1940", "text": "Knoxville, Tennessee, Dec. 28, 1940:

We came home to a sad Christmas. Eleanor's mother, a very beautiful and remarkable woman, we all loved, had been found dead in her bed. It is a grand way to die and she was old and tired but something inside her never had tired. Her death wrecked us.

Monte dear, your confession of love is the finest Christmas gift I could have. I shall hang it up on a peg in my inner mind.

--View this page or all pages in this set at Newberry Digital Collections
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The Writer: Sherwood Anderson