By Mary E. Stewart

I have no idea what my parents expected when they moved to New York for my father’s job with Today magazine. My father, William C. (Bill) Stewart , was managing editor of Today from the first issue until April 1935. This was the reason for his initial contact with Sherwood Anderson. They became friends, and my parents visited the Andersons at Ripshin. Their friendship continued even after Bill left Today and there was no business reason to maintain contact.

Bill was born in Brownwood, Texas, in 1907. He was interested in writing and drawing from an early age. He was on the staff of various publications at his high school, including serving as editor-in-chief of The Tattler, a semi-monthly magazine. Several of his drawings were included in the yearbook. He stayed in Brownwood to attend Howard Payne College and to work for the Brownwood Bulletin. He left Howard Payne after a disagreement with the faculty regarding his work on the college paper. The story I remember hearing was that he had written an article saying people should be allowed to smoke on campus, and the college did not approve of smoking or writing in favor of it. In 1928 he spent his vacation driving through the South and writing about his experiences. Shortly after this, he left the Bulletin to work for Scripps-Howard papers in Memphis and Birmingham. From the Birmingham Post, Bill went to Southbridge, Massachusetts.¹

Bill’s job at Today was part of a continuing business relationship with V.V. McNitt, of the McNaught Syndicate, lasting until the mid-1950s. McNitt bought the Southbridge News in 1931 and hired Bill as managing editor. In 1932, Bill married Bernadette (Bern) Lavin of Worcester, Massachusetts. Bill returned to the Southbridge News after working for Today. The family moved to California as a result of McNitt’s purchase of the Westwood Hills Press.

Averill Harriman, Vincent Astor, and Harriman’s sister, Mrs. Mary Rumsey, were the financial backers of Today. Raymond Moley resigned as Assistant Secretary of State to become editor of Today. To answer questions as to whether Moley was leaving because of his conflicts with Secretary Hull, McNitt said that this was not a sudden decision. They had considered buying the Washington Post for Moley to edit. This did not happen because they were unwilling to pay more than $552,000 for the Post.²

Eugene Meyer bought the Post for $825,000 shortly after he resigned as governor of the Federal Reserve Board.³ McNitt was brought in as executive editor to provide journalism expertise. McNaught Syndicate handled Moley’s newspaper feature, and McNitt had worked with Mrs. Rumsey on a previous project. McNitt stayed until December 1933, and the executive editor position was vacant from that date until April 1935.

The first issue of Today (October 28, 1933) promised that Sherwood Anderson would be one of the contributors; “No Swank,” a story about Henry Wallace, appeared two weeks later. Bill’s files do not include any correspondence about “No Swank” as an article. When it was published in 1934 as part of a collection of articles under the same title, Today did not receive a review copy even after several requests. Bill wrote to Sherwood and Eleanor asking them to order a copy for Today. A copy was sent and a brief review was included on the January 26, 1935, book page of Today.

“Explain! Explain! Again Explain!,” discussing the need for President Franklin D. Roosevelt to explain his ideas to the American people, ran on December 2, 1933, as a letter to the editor. The galley proof shows that just enough was taken out to make the letter and Moley’s reply fit on one page. Moley’s answer was to tell Anderson to go travel around and send back stories that Today would print to explain the views of the people. This served to introduce the first series of articles.

“At the Mine Mouth,” from Charleston, West Virginia (December 30, 1933), was apparently not part of the series, as the CCC camp story is later referred to as the first, and a March 8, 1934, letter refers to the completion of six of the eight articles. The cover letters for both the West Virginia and CCC stories are addressed to Bill “Stuart.” By the end of January 1934, when the next article was sent in, the spelling had been corrected to Stewart. The CCC story ran February 10, and the series continued through May 26, usually every two weeks. The travel for the series was completed and the last story submitted by April 5. At this point, the letters were still business letters dealing with stories and expenses. The only unusual comment occurs in a letter (February 28, 1934) from Durham, North Carolina. Anderson was planning to go from Durham to Knoxville and said: “Will loiter along, talking it over with them. You’d better come join me.” Bill’s brief time at a Memphis paper would not have provided any business reason for such a trip, and there is no further mention of the idea.

Bill and Bern made three visits to Ripshin. The first was in 1934. The others were in 1935 and 1938. In May 1934, when Anderson asked Bill to send Today to Ripshin during the summer, he included an invitation to visit. Today generally did not carry fiction, but an updated letter from Bill suggests that Anderson send in a story for use during the summer and also says that he hopes to take advantage of the invitation to visit. The June 22 letter acknowledging receipt of the story (“Virginia Justice,” Today, July 21, 1934), again mentions a hope to visit. The visit apparently occurred in late July, as Bill’s July 12 letter to the Andersons thanks them for travel directions and mentions a Friday night or Saturday morning arrival. None of the photographs of Ripshin in the family album are dated 1934.

In April 1934, Anderson had written to Bill suggesting he discuss with Moley the idea of Anderson visiting Cleveland to interview those who had been industrial and banking leaders in 1925-29. Nothing further is mentioned about this, but August letters mention a proposal for a trip around the Midwest in the fall. This trip was approved, and the first article, “Sherwood Anderson Goes Home,” ran on December 8. It was about small-town Ohio. An article on Floyd B. Olson, governor of Minnesota, was modified to delete information on Olson’s background that had been covered in two articles by Fred Kelly. According to Bill’s letter to Eleanor, neither writer had known the other was working on Olson, but when Anderson’s article ran, the readers were told this was the conclusion of a three-part series.

After the Middle West trip, the Andersons headed for Brownsville, Texas. Bill, as a Texan, never really got used to the grapefruit available in the Northeast. It was picked green, shipped in ice cars, and never ripened properly.

The story on the Rio Grande Valley, “Valley Apart,” appeared on April 20, 1935. This was the first issue of Today that did not list William C. Stewart as managing editor. There had been changes at the magazine; a January letter mentioned that W.P. Beazell (the assistant editor) had left and Bill had been given additional duties. A newspaper clipping in the Stewart files says that on April 9 Filmore Hyde, who had been assistant editor of News-Week, would become executive editor of Today. The clipping also mentions that William Stewart would be returning to the McNaught Syndicate. The executive editor position had been vacant since McNitt had returned to the Syndicate. The changes were continuing in June when Fred Kelly wrote to Bill that he was out because of the “new policy.” Kelly had traveled for Today, reporting from Austria and the Soviet Union as well as doing domestic stories. Today eventually was merged into Newsweek. Who Was Who says that Moley was editor of Today 1933-37 and contributing editor of Newsweek 1937-68.⁴

Puzzled America did not have an acknowledgment that some articles had appeared in Today. When Anderson wrote to Roger Sergel (April 24, 1935,) about this and said that this “will cost me my job with them, as Moley is terribly sensitive to slights,”⁵ he already knew that Bill was no longer with Today. Bill had written, at the end of March, that he would be leaving Today for reasons he would tell him later. Anderson’s reply was: “It’s odd. Eleanor had a hunch. As she was going down stairs she suddenly got the conviction that you were no longer at Today and there, at the hotel desk, was your letter.” I don’t remember hearing any discussion of the changes at Today or my father’s reason for leaving. I know that he gave Moley as a reference years later when McNitt sold his paper in Los Angeles, so apparently the departure was not hostile.

The Stewarts went to Ripshin Farm again in 1935. Other guests were there at the same time including Waldi Van Eck, from Holland, and Elise and Julius Friend, from New Orleans. Most of the photos from that trip are of Sherwood with his dog.

“Valley Apart” mentioned houses on wheels and described one that had been built by its owner, a man from Kansas. “The house was what it was, built on an automobile truck chassis, It had a kitchen, with a regular farm kitchen stove, the stovepipe going up through the ceiling, and a very comfortable-seeming sleeping and living room” (“Valley Apart,” Today, March 20, 1935, p. 22). Early in 1936, Anderson wrote to Bill suggesting that Bill and Bern travel around America, possibly in a little house attached to the car. The idea was that Bill could write about what he saw from the point of view of a tourist. Years later, when Bill sent a copy of this and other letters to Eleanor, he commented that his response had probably been that Sherwood could do a better job with this idea. Whatever Bill had said, Anderson was almost apologetic: “You got me wrong about that other thing. It came into my head as a thing you and Bern might do to give you more freedom. Suppose I take to wandering so naturally I think everyone would like it.” Bill also said that Ernie Pyle did something similar for United Features.

The Stewarts also visited Ripshin in 1938. In June, Eleanor had invited them to come sometime after July 20. They drove down from Southbridge in a Rolls Royce. The car made it into Anderson’s diary and also into a photo under some trees at Ripshin. It had originally belonged to Albert B. Wells, also of Southbridge. Rolls Royce had a plant in Springfield, about thirty miles from Southbridge. Wells had the car built to his specifications when business at the plant was slow in the early 1930s. He took the car to his other home in Southern California for awhile. When he decided to sell it, he took it back to Southbridge and sold it through the local Chrysler dealer.⁶ The last picture of the Rolls in the Stewart family album is dated 1940. When the Stewarts left Ripshin on July 29, 1938, Sherwood’s diary says they were “very satisfactory guests.” On August 3, Eleanor wrote asking for the “negative of the picture of Sherwood and the dog.” Bill sent the negatives for two pictures and promised to send a set of pictures from the recent trip. In the collection of letters edited by Howard Mumford Jones, the picture opposite page 402 is dated 1938. However, the wording of Eleanor’s letter and Bill’s reply indicate it is from the 1935 trip. Also it is in the family album with pictures labeled 1935, and the border on the print matches the 1935 rather than the 1938 prints. The 1938 pictures include several in the chairs that tip upside down.

The August 3 letter also says “Sherwood got your picture yesterday and took it to be framed.” This was a picture Bill sent as part of the “rogues gallery” at Ripshin. When Bill wrote to Eleanor after Sherwood’s death in 1941, he mentioned that they had just missed each other in New York. The letter also referred to pictures taken three years before including one of Eleanor in the chair that tipped over backwards. He expressed the hope that Mary could meet Eleanor right side up. This did happen when Eleanor made a trip to the West Coast for the YWCA, after we had moved to California.

My father had always been interested in history. A book he mentioned to Sherwood was never published, but some of the research may have been the basis for newspaper articles. After moving to California, Bill began tracing his family and found that his people had lived in the Virginia hills, before moving on. His research was published by state historical societies and the National Genealogical Society, but he never had a chance to return to Virginia. Bill continued his newspaper work and was employed by the Los Angeles Times when he died in 1968. Bern stayed in California and died in 1989.

The photos on the wall and in the album made it clear to me as a child that Sherwood Anderson was an author my parents had known. As far as I remember, we did not read any of his stories in school. In fact, when I mentioned his name in a class, the teacher thought I was talking about Robert Sherwood. “Stolen Day” is included in the anthology my seventh grade classes use. My students enjoy seeing pictures, so I show the ones I have, including Sherwood with his dog.

NOTES

1. Brownwood Bulletin February 28, 1933, various undated clippings
2.Editor & Publisher, September 2, 1933.
3. Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and the Washington Post (New York: Harcourt Brace Janovich, 1979), p, 55.
4. Who Was Who in America, vol. 6, 1974-76, 288.
5. Letters of Sherwood Anderson, ed. Howard Mumford Jones and Walter B. Rideout (Boston: Little, Brown, 1953), 313.
6. Albert B. Wells “Sequel to the Story of a Gallant Old Rolls Royce,” Westwood Hills Press, letter, no date.

By Welford Dunaway Taylor

Critics and biographers have paid scant attention to the sketches that Sherwood Anderson wrote for the trade magazine Agricultural Advertising between 1902 and 1905. A possible reason is that this juvenilia, produced well before Anderson had developed into a writer of serious fiction, has been overshadowed (justifiably) by the mature work he was to produce some ten years later. Thus, James Schevill may be correct in discounting its significance by asserting that “the only importance of these first attempts at writing is that they uncover Anderson’s youthful character” (38). However, a more probable and practical cause for neglect is the obscurity of the periodical itself, which has heretofore made the material inaccessible to all but the most intrepid researchers.

Ray White’s inclusion of the Agricultural Advertising pieces in his edition Sherwood Anderson: Early Writings (1989) [hereinafter EW], seems likely to alter the existing perception. Although the volume’s stated purpose is to provide access, rather than to make critical claims, the fact that it makes the texts readily available invites broader study and even the possibility of inclusion under that increasingly troublesome rubric, the “canon.” Although in this initial body of published work Anderson wrote in the accepted and facile idiom of the advertising copywriter (a style he would later denounce as “slick”), I maintain that these efforts are deserving of more than summary dismissal, if for no other reason than that they form part of the textual record of a seminal American author. However, two groups of the Agricultural Advertising pieces–the “Rot and Reason” and the “Business Types” series–reveal much more. For one, they feature a consistent, and as yet unacknowledged use of a standard literary device which, although self-consciously applied, prefigures a dominant trait found in Winesburg, Ohio (1919), Anderson’s masterpiece. Moreover, given this link to the later work, the sketches serve as at least a partial corrective to the popular myth that Anderson’s literary career began with the pivotal moment in 1912 when, in a sudden, Caedmon-like epiphany, he rejected commercialism for literature by walking out of his business office never to return. To a degree the myth persists, despite the mitigating efforts of several well-informed investigators to show that the author of Winesburg, Ohio had undergone a long, if rather sparsely documented, apprenticeship. Therefore, determining the literary dimensions of his initial step into publication may serve to enhance the efforts to reconstruct this erratic pattern.

In 1900, just after graduating from Wittenburg Academy, Sherwood Anderson joined the Frank B. White Company in Chicago as an advertising solicitor. The position had been made possible through his friend Marco Morrow, an executive with the company. Some two years later, Anderson began writing occasional articles on farming topics for the company magazine, Agricultural Advertising, which Morrow edited. Early in 1903 Morrow placed Anderson in charge of “Rot and Reason,” a monthly feature in the magazine. Anderson wrote “Rot and Reason” articles from February to October, 1903. From January to October,1904 he supplied the columns for “Business Types” in the same magazine. Then, after contributing two additional, but unrelated, feature articles in the spring of 1905, Anderson terminated his formal connection with the company (which was by now absorbed into the Long-Critchfield Agency) to pursue a more active and independent course in business.

There is much thematic similarity between the two series, “Rot and Reason” and “Business Types.” This is partially summarized by Kim Townsend as “Sherwood Anderson discovering and exploring what it was that mattered to him–which is to say, himself, an American man, discovering himself in writing” (47). But these articles also show Anderson making important discoveries about creative expression in prose, even within the narrow guidelines of Agricultural Advertising. It is one such early discovery, of which he made repeated use, that I hope to demonstrate as a link between the articles in these early series and Anderson’s most mature artistry.

Beginning with “The Traveling Man,” one of three subheadings of his first “Rot and Reason” column, Anderson indulges in a brief passage that sketches, in broad outline, some commonly recognized features of the traveling salesman. His description runs as follows:

Common to the verge of imbecility, dressed as only a fool would dress nowadays, and having as his chief stock of trade a fund of vile and indecent stories, he went forth with his soap, his cigars and his ladies’ underwear to smear the path of all decent men who must follow him for years to come. I have been told that occasionally specimens of this tribe may yet be found in all their unwashed unloveliness in out-of-the-way places about the country, but they are going, and thank Providence they will soon be gone. (EW 23-4)

The passage is unremarkable, except that it initiates a genre that recurs with some frequency in the remaining “Rot and Reason” columns and becomes, in turn, the predominant configuration of the subsequent “Business Types” series. By standard literary definition this is “character writing,” a tradition deriving from a Greek prototype created by Theophrastus in the third century B.C.; revived and adapted early in the seventeenth century by such English practitioners as Sir Thomas Overbury, John Earle, and Joseph Hall; and re-adapted later in the seventeenth century in France by Jean de La Bruyère. As demonstrated by Anderson’s depiction of the traveling salesman, the “character” typified a combination of definite, if obvious, qualities. The portrayal is not of an individualized personality; rather, it is a type, one usually emblematic of a particular cultural or social classification. In Overbury’s metaphorical definition, it is “a quick and soft touch of many strings, all shutting up in one musical close; it is wit’s descant on any plain song” (Witherspoon and Warnke 203).

Thus, beginning with the traveling salesman, a central if obvious figure in the mythos of American commercialism, Anderson proceeded in the “Rot and Reason” columns to present miniatures of other “types” easily recognizable to the readers of Agricultural Advertising. Prominent among the many are the American businessman (“Boost No.1,” EW 37); the successful modern farmer (“The Golden Harvest Farmer,” EW 43-45); the spoiler in business (“The Golden Fake,” EW 46); and the burned-out businessman (“The Born Quitter,” EW 27). In all these examples, the defining lineaments of the “character” tradition remain more or less consistent, especially the attempt to present the generalized category, one embodying an identity derived from a context that the reader will recognize immediately.

The “Rot and Reason” columns reveal, however, that Anderson was beginning even at this early juncture to experiment with techniques that advanced the delineation of his business “characters” well beyond a generalized typicality. For example, in several instances, rather than present a collection of defining characteristics, he illustrates character by means of an anecdote, either hypothetical or personal. The earliest example is “The Born Quitter,” one of the subheadings for his second (March, 1903) “Rot and Reason” column (EW 27). Here he pairs off an aggressive young businessman type with his burned-out counterpart.

This presentation of character through anecdote is superseded the following month by a more rounded, parable-like sketch titled “Packingham” (EW 30-31), in which a self-made manufacturer is used to illustrate the importance of the love of work to the success ethic. “Packingham” is perhaps the most finished installment in the “Rot and Reason” series, in that the characterization is presented with a minimum of authorial comment. Other “characters” in the series were usually embellished with Anderson’s own slick commentaries on business-related topics and were often followed by a series of aphoristic squibs.

In “Business Types,” the next series Anderson wrote for Agricultural Advertising,the “character” became the primary focus, and a different type was presented for each of the ten months that he produced the column. In many of these depictions Anderson expands the former descriptive mode, often subsuming it within a miniature narrative in which the subject “character” is featured. Of particular note are the installments that draw upon personal experiences, or else upon private concerns that would later be given more intense, and more finished, treatment in the fiction. One article in particular recalls an incident from Anderson’s early working experience with the White firm. It is “The Solicitor” (EW 90-93), which relates how a young account executive is sent out to a particularly intractable client and returns with an order exceeding the original expectation by ten-fold. “The Liar–A Vacation Story” (EW 82-87) combines actual experience and a personal perception that remained a life-long fascination for Anderson. It involves a man with an annoying habit of re-inventing his past to suit present circumstances. This “liar” surprises a skeptical group of listeners with an accurately detailed account of his work in a bicycle factory (one of Anderson’s early jobs). Another narrative, “The Man of Affairs” (EW 70-75), offers readers of the later fiction adumbrations of the novel Poor White (1920) and its protagonist, Hugh McVey. The sketch depicts a young provincial named Peter Macveagh, whose self-made prosperity fails to produce either fulfillment or inner wholeness. “The Boyish Man” (EW 100-102) treats still another enduring Andersonian motif: the retention of a youthful perspective despite advancing age.

In the combined “Rot and Reason” and “Business Types” series, I note twenty-one distinct examples of the “character” genre. The last, “The Fussy Man and the Trimmer” ( EW 102-105)–its title echoing that of Halifax’s “Character of a Trimmer” (1682)–appeared in December 1904, a few months before Anderson left the Long-Critchfield agency to pursue his own entrepreneurial quest.

While some examples contain foreshadowings of the fictional talent that would fully reveal itself almost a decade later, most of this juvenilia reveals certain limitations. Chief among these is the choice of subject. Although his selection of commercial avatars represents a fairly broad spectrum within the type, Anderson has not gone outside American trade and agriculture to look for material. However, this is not so much a reflection of his own parochial interests at the time, as an indication that he was obliged to write within guidelines prescribed by his employer. His audience, moreover, was specialized and limited. He gave readers of Agricultural Advertising the kind of profile with which they were familiar in a style accentuated by clichés and glib banalities.

Unfortunately, minimal documentation exists for Anderson’s life during the decade following the appearance of his final business “character.” What is definitely known is that he was torn between the demands of business and the enticements of literature; of family obligations and the desire to be independent; of writing according to formula and the compelling need to create his own form and voice.

Something of the transforming power of these struggles can be gauged by his article on the “New Note” in literature, published in 1914 in the first two issues of Margaret Anderson’s Little Review, Chicago’s contribution to the burgeoning tide of avant-garde literary magazines. Proclaiming the basis of the new literary order as “craft love,” he insists that the artist with a commitment to craft must “record his own mood . . . simply, and without pretense or windiness” (EW 123). “I myself believe,” he continues, “that when a man can thus stand aside from himself, recording simply and truthfully the inner workings of his own mind, he will be prepared to record truthfully the workings of other minds” (Ibid.). Within a year and a half, in a singular voice that spoke in “a kind of poetry” with “word . . . laid against word in just a certain way” so as to give “a kind of word color, a march of simple words and sentences” (Memoirs 243). Anderson began recording the often troubled “inner workings” of the fictional citizenry of Winesburg, Ohio.

As they began appearing in 1915-16, the impressionistic story-sketches in which these characters are featured would strike sympathetic readers as novel and revolutionary and skeptical traditionalists as eccentric and bizarre. I submit, however, that this gallery of repressed individuals, however much they evoke the precepts of an emerging American modernist, were not the wholly fresh creations that they are presumed to be. Rather, the basic pattern of their delineation recalls the one-dimensional “characters” of more than a decade before.

While acknowledging that there is credible internal evidence, both thematic and formalistic, for establishing this connection, I believe that it is reflected most decisively and consistently in the actual titles of the Winesburg stories. For, recalling that Anderson’s object in his initial use of hypothetical “characters” was to illustrate a general principle, we see the pattern repeated in Winesburg, Ohio with comparable frequency.

As they appear on the first edition contents page–which is titled, appropriately, “The Tales and the Persons”– all save two of the twenty-four titles express an abstract, or at least a generalized, category (see Appendix). Ten of them are clearly abstractions. These, in their order of appearance, are: “Godliness,” “Adventure,” “Respectability,” “Tandy,” “Loneliness,” “‘Queer’,” “Drink,” “Death,” “Sophistication,” and “Departure.” More to the point, five of the other titles reveal a particular classification, or “type,” of person. These are: “Mother,” “The Philosopher,” “A Man of Ideas,” “The Thinker,” and “The Teacher.”

It should also be noted that during the winter of 1915-16, while Anderson wrote the majority of the Winesburg stories, he published in Little Review and The Smart Set three others (which do not appear in the book) with titles denoting similar categories of person: “Sister,” “The Story Writers,” and “The Novelist.” From the eight person/type examples stated above–the five in Winesburg and the three not included–it seems obvious that in selecting titles for his emerging corpus of mature short fiction, Anderson was repeating a design from his former commercial “character” writing. In its Winesburg incarnation, however, the “character” is neither a mere generality nor a hypothetical emblem of a broad principle. Rather, each is a distinct fictional entity serving as a concrete illustration of a broad category. Thus, for example, the character Elizabeth Willard is but a half-component of the complete entry, which reads: “Mother–concerning Elizabeth Willard.” Indeed, following twenty-three of the story titles in the table of contents (i. e., excepting “The Book of the Grotesque”) is the name of a fictional character who serves as exemplification for the title category (see Appendix).

That this was a conscious design on Anderson’s part seems to be affirmed in part by the revisions of various of the individual titles (White, “Story Titles” 6-7). The original manuscript form of nine titles (their earliest manifestation) appeared as individualized designations (see below). However, all of these were changed in the manuscript to the form in which they appear on the first edition contents page. In each case, the original designation has been expanded from a particularized into a more generalized, or in some cases an abstract, form. Though this transformation varies in degree from title to title–ranging from the substitution of one article for another (“An Untold Lie” (ms.) “The Untold Lie” (1st ed.), to amplifying a personalized or particular instance into an abstract category (“George Leaves Winesburg” (ms.) “Departure” (1st ed.)–the revisions to all nine titles indicate the common pattern. The full list of these changes is as follows:

• Manuscript………………….. First Edition
• Grotesques ………………….The Book of the Grotesque
• George Willard’s Mother ……Mother
• Her Adventure ………………Adventure
• Wash Williams……………….Respectability
• The School Teacher………….The Teacher
• Alone…………………………Loneliness
• George Willard’s Awakening..An Awakening
• An Untold Lie………………..The Untold Lie
• George Leaves Winesburg……Departure

As a corollary to the above model, five manuscript titles that began as abstract or generalized designations–“Hands,” “The Strength of God,” “‘Queer’,” “Death,” and “Sophistication”–remain unchanged in the first edition. Thus, in revising those manuscript titles that denoted a particular, as opposed to a general or abstract quality, Anderson was apparently bringing them into conformity with the overall principle of suggesting universality through abstract categories, all of which are illustrated by concrete exemplar/characters.

It is worth noting that in one of the earliest and most detailed commentaries on Winesburg, Ohio, Harry Hansen made repeated reference to the stories as depictions of “types.” Asserting that they qualified Anderson’s name to be linked with that of Chekhov, Hansen argued:

[The characters’] universality . . . is distinct; they are types to be found in any community. But the narcissus character of most individuals, who look into a mirror and thereupon pronounce all the world beautiful, will not let them acknowledge the typical character of Anderson’s people. These critics apply the terms abnormal, subnormal, delinquent, vicious, and other epithets that are in current use to designate a variation from the normal and average . . . [But] after all, he was entitled to the right of selection. (148)

The universality cited by Hansen suggests the broadest possible connotation, compared to which the sphere of American commerce of which Anderson had written more than a decade before is a tiny component. What had begun as commonplace prototypes (“The Born Quitter,” “The Lightweight”) had been transformed into fully realized fictional creations, such as Wing Biddlebaum, Doctor Reefy, and The Reverend Curtis Hartman. All of the Winesburg characters play emblematic roles, as had their predecessors. However, the nature of this function points up another distinctive feature of Anderson’s mature artistry. The commercial “characters” had represented conventional, everyday concerns of farming and commerce. The Winesburg characters exemplify matters that were anything but conventional. The village minister’s libido is obviously stronger than “The Strength of God” that he represents and professes. “Respectability” is exemplified by a cynical and scarred old man who hates all women.

Collectively, the Winesburg stories take received, clichè-like notions of popular concepts and people and re-define them with an apparent guileless frankness and vividness. The contrast between these sophisticated portrayals and those published in a “two-bit trade journal” (Townsend 49-50) a decade before is indeed vast. Yet, for all their amateurishness, these early efforts, through the device of the classical “character,” foreshadow Anderson’s finest work. Given their present accessibility, perhaps these early texts will be mined for additional clues to the origins of Sherwood Anderson’s unique literary talents.

APPENDIX

The complete text of the contents page (less page numbers) appears as follows in the first edition of Winesburg, Ohio: The Tales and the Persons

• The Book of the Grotesque.
• Hands–concerning Wing Biddlebaum.
• Paper Pills–concerning Doctor Reefy.
• Mother–concerning Elizabeth Willard.
• The Philosopher–concerning Doctor Parcival.
• Nobody Knows–concerning Louise Trunnion.
• Godliness (Parts I and II)–concerning Jesse Bentley.
• Surrender (Part III)–concerning Louise Bentley.
• Terror (Part IV)–concerning David Hardy.
• A Man of Ideas–concerning Joe Welling.
• Adventure–concerning Alice Hindman.
• Respectability–concerning Wash Williams.
• The Thinker–concerning Seth Richmond.
• Tandy–concerning Tandy Hard.
• The Strength of God–concerning The Reverend Curtis Hartman.
• The Teacher–concerning Kate Swift.
• Loneliness–concerning Enoch Robinson.
• An Awakening–concerning Belle Carpenter.
• “Queer”–concerning Elmer Cowley.
• The Untold Lie–concerning Ray Pearson.

WORKS CITED

Anderson, Sherwood. Early Writings. Ed. Ray Lewis White. Kent and London: Kent State UP, 1989. ______. Sherwood Anderson’s Memoirs. Ed. Paul Rosenfeld. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1942.

Hansen, Harry. Midwest Portraits. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1923.

Mouscher, Karen-Elisabeth. “Sherwood Anderson: The Early Advertising Years.” Unpublished Dissertation: Northwestern University (1986)

Schevill, James. Sherwood Anderson: His Life and Work. Denver: U of Denver P, 1953.

Townsend, Kim. Sherwood Anderson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

White, Ray Lewis. “Winesburg, Ohio Story Titles.” The Winesburg Eagle 10 (November 1984): 6-7.

Witherspoon, Alexander M. and Frank J. Warnke, eds. Seventeenth-Century Prose and Poetry. 2nd Edition. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1963.

About our contributors: Our bibliographer is Margaret Kulis, reference librarian in special collections at the Newberry Library in Chicago. Mary E. Stewart teaches English and reading at a middle school in South-Central Los Angeles. The family interest in history has taken her into the Middle Ages as Ealasaid Catriona nyn Uilleim in the Society for Creative Anachronism. Welford Dunaway Taylor is James A. Bostwick Professor of English at the University of Richmond. He is the founding editor of the Winesburg Eagle and co-editor, with Charles E. Modlin, of the recently published Southern Odyssey: Selected Writings by Sherwood Anderson.

Bradbury Responds

A copy of the Summer 1997 issue of the Winesburg Eagle, containing the article “‘That Always Autumn Town’: Winesburg, Ohio and the Fiction of Ray Bradbury,” was mailed to Mr. Bradbury by the essayist, James E. Person, Jr. Not long afterward, Jim received the following brief, kind reply from the author of Dandelion Wine: Dear James Person:

Thanks, much thanks, for your article on “Winesburg” and Green Town! Hard for me to judge the “resemblances of things past” (as ’twere) but I found it all fascinating. I will keep and treasure your text!

With gratitude,
Ray Bradbury
Sept. 6, 1997

Plans are underway to transform the Winesburg Eagle into a journal to be named The Sherwood Anderson Review. Details of this change will be announced later.

By Margaret Kulis

Current Listings

A. Books and Dissertations
1. Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg Ohio: Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism. Ed. Charles E. Modlin and Ray Lewis White. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. 2. Cox, Karen Castellucci. “Merging Fictions: Community, Memory, and the Twentieth Century Story Cycle.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Davis, 1996.

3. Gaterud, John. “The Jigsaw of Sherwood Anderson’s ‘Puzzled America’.” Ph.D. diss., The Union Institute, 1996.

4. Gibson, Todd. “Racing with the World: Hybridity and the Construction of American Literary Modernism.” Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1996.

5. Simolke, Duane Mac. “Stein, Gender, Isolation, and Industrialism: New Readings of “Winesburg, Ohio’.” Ph.D. diss., Texas Tech. University, 1996.

6. Steinecke, Ann. “Revolt from the Village: Place and Anxiety in Modern American Fiction.” Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, 1996.

B. Articles, Chapters, and Discussions

1. [unsigned]. Review of Winesburg, Ohio (audio version) by Sherwood Anderson. In Kliatt 30 (January 1996): 53.

2. Allen, John. “Unity in Winesburg, Ohio: The Interdependence of Communication, Isolation and Physical Description.” The Winesburg Eagle 21 (Winter 1996): 7-10.

3. Anderson, David D. “Photography and The Written Word.” Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature Newsletter 26 (Spring 1996): 3-7.

4. Anderson, David D. “Sherwood Anderson and Hart Crane: A Temporary Friendship.” Society for the Study of Midwestern Literarture Newsletter 26 (Summer 1996): 8-14.

5. Anderson, Peter and Charles Modlin. “John Sherwood Anderson.” The Winesburg Eagle 21 (Summer 1996): 11-12.

6. Anderson, Sherwood. “‘Give Me the City.'” The Winesburg Eagle 21 (Summer 1996): 1-2.

7. Anderson, Sherwood. “Green Tea.” In Sins of the Fathers: An Anthology of Clerical Crime. London: Victor Gollancz, 1996.

8. Anderson, Sherwood. “Home.” In Late Haverst: Rural American Writing. New York: Smithmark, 1996.

9. Anderson, Sherwood. “In einer fremden Stadt” [In a Strange Town].

Translated by Juergen Dierking. Stint: Zeitschrift fur Literartur 20 (November 1996): 118-130.

10. Anderson, Sherwood. “[On Writing] ‘I¹m A Fool.'” Winesburg Eagle 21 (Winter 1996): 1.

11. Anderson, Sherwood. “Windy McPherson¹s Son” (excerpt) in “Madness Was His Muse.” Chicago Tribune, 14 April 1996, Sec. 10, p. 22, col. 1.

12. Anderson, Sherwood. “The Owensboro School Bond Editorials.” The Winesburg Eagle 21 (Summer 1996): 6-8.

13. Campbell, Hilbert. “The ‘Shadow People’: Feodor Sologub and Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg Ohio. Studies in Short Fiction “ 22 (Winter 1996): 51-58.

14. Cantor, M. Review of Our America “ by Walter B. Michaels. In Choice “ 33 (March 1996): 1135.

15. Fahlman, Betsy. “Arnold Ronnebeck and Alfred Stieglitz: Remembering the Hill.” History of Photography “ 20 (Winter 1996): 304-311.

16. Granger, Bill. “Sherwood Anderson: His Anger Fueled His Pen.” Chicago Tribune,” 14 April 1996, Sec. 10, p. 24, col. 1.

17. Kulis, Margaret. “A Sherwood Anderson Checklist: 1994.” Winesburg Eagle “ 21 (Winter 1996): 10-12.

18. Modlin, Charles. “Sherwood Anderson’s Kentucky Connections.” Winesburg Eagle “ 21 (Winter 1996): 1-5.

19. Ryan, Dennis. “‘A Divine Gesture’: Hemingway¹s Complex Parody of the Modern.” Hemingway Review “ 16 (Fall 1996): 1-17.

20. Samway, Patrick H. Review of Carolina Moon “ by Jill McCorkle. In America “ 175 (September 21, 1996): 31.

21. Sargeson, Frank. “Sherwood Anderson.” The Winesburg Eagle “ 21 (Winter 1996): 6.
22. Seymour-Smith, Martin; Kimmens, Andrew C., eds. “Sherwood Anderson.” In World Authors, 1900-1950, “ 47-9. H. W. Wilson, 1996.

23. Shuman R. B. Review of Large Animals in Everyday Life “ by Wendy Brenner. In Choice “ 34 (October 1996): 275.

24. Spear, David M. “Marion ‘Mimi’ Anderson Spear.” Winesburg Eagle “ 21 (Summer 1996): 9-10.

25. Tuttleton, James W. “Sherwood Anderson: A Room of His Own.” In Vital Signs; Essays on American Literature and Criticism” by James W. Tuttleton , 273-88. Dee, I.R. , 1996.

26. White, Ray Lewis. “Anderson’s Will and Estate.” The Winesburg Eagle “ 21 (Summer 1996): 3-5.

Additional Listings

A. Articles, Chapters, and Discussions 1. Anderson, David. D. “Wanderers and Sojourners: Sherwood Anderson and the People of Winesburg.” Midamerica “ 22 (1995): 89-96. 2. Beasecker, Robert. “Annual Bibliography of Midwestern Literature: 1993.” Midamerica “ 22 (1995): 152.