Springtime and Harvest - Career

Career

In 1904, Sinclair spent seven weeks in disguise, working undercover in Chicago's meatpacking plants to research his political fiction exposé, The Jungle. When it was published two years later, it became a bestseller. With the income from The Jungle, Sinclair founded the utopian Helicon Home Colony in Englewood, New Jersey. He ran as a Socialist candidate for Congress. The colony burned down under suspicious circumstances within a year.

During his years with his second wife, Mary Craig, Sinclair wrote or produced several films. Recruited by Charlie Chaplin, Sinclair and Mary Craig produced Eisenstein's ¡Qué viva México! in 1930-32.

The Sinclairs moved to California in the 1920s and lived there for nearly four decades. Late in life Sinclair, with his third wife, moved to Buckeye, Arizona, and then to Bound Brook, New Jersey. Sinclair died there in a nursing home on November 25, 1968. He is buried in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C., next to his third wife, Mary Willis, who had died a year before him.

Aside from his political and social writings, Sinclair took an interest in occult phenomena and experimented with telepathy. His book entitled Mental Radio was published in 1930 and included accounts of his wife Mary's telepathic experiences and ability. William McDougall read the book and wrote an introduction to it. It led him to establish the parapsychology department at Duke University.

The Upton Sinclair House in Monrovia, California, is now a National Historic Landmark. The papers, photographs, and first editions of most of Sinclair's books are found at the Lilly Library at Indiana University in Bloomington.