Upton Sinclair and The Jungle
Bedford / St. Martin's version (2005),
edited and introduced by Christopher Phelps
 
Commentary on this edition of The Jungle
 

“Christopher Phelps has written an excellent new introduction that places The Jungle in a multitude of political, social, and literary genres, thus making the book accessible to all sorts of readers and useful within a divergent set of academic disciplines.  He shows us that Upton Sinclair’s classic still has plenty to tell a twenty-first-century audience.”—Nelson Lichtenstein

 

“This is a remarkably well-researched introduction, written with passion and intelligence.”—Michael Kazin

 

About.com literature critic ranks this edition as the best available resource for understanding Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

 

 

Additional Writings on Upton Sinclair and The Jungle 

 
"The Fictitious Suppression of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle" (2006)
 
"How Should We Teach 'The Jungle'?" in The Chronicle of Higher Education (2006)
 
Centennial essays in Canadian Dimension (2005), Labor Notes (2005), Against the Current (2005), and the Mansfield News Journal (2006).
 
"Upton Sinclair," in The Encyclopedia of Capitalism, ed. Syed B. Hussain (Facts on File, 2004), article not available on line.
 

 

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Published by Doubleday, Page in 1906, this novel about a Lithuanian immigrant factory worker's hard-knock experiences in Chicago provided a shocking revelation of conditions and practices in American meatpacking. A bestseller, it prompted massive public revulsion that issued in passage of the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act. 
 
This new edition features the report of two inspectors sent by President Theodore Roosevelt to Chicago to discern whether Sinclair's charges were true, a bibliography, a chronology of Sinclair's life, questions to facilitate discussion, an annotated text, and a comprehensive new introduction.
Relevant Press Attention

 

Scott McLemee's InsideHigherEd.com column on versions of The Jungle (2006)

 

Associated Press note on The Jungle, sidebar to meatpacking article (2006) 

 

Medill News Service article on centennial of The Jungle (2006)

 

Houston Chronicle columnist Cragg Hines on TR's "muckraking" speech (2006)

 

McLemee interview about The Jungle on InsideHigherEd.com (2005)

 

Subsequent observations by McLemee on InsideHigherEd.com (2005)

 

McLemee's Chronicle of Higher Education article on literary realism (2004)