Upton Sinclair, Jr.

Upton Sinclair, a lifelong vigorous socialist, first became well known with a powerful muckraking novel, The Jungle, in 1906. Refused by five publishers and finally published by Sinclair himself, it became an immediate bestseller, and inspired a government investigation of the Chicago stockyards, which led to much reform. Sinclair was not really a novelist, but a fearless and indefatigable journalist-crusader.