Book Description
The JungleThe Jungle has drawn comment from historians, policy makers, and literary critics. "Contexts and Backgrounds" does full justice to the disparate social, historical, political, and literary dimensions of the novel. "Criticism" includes eight readings sure to foster classroom discussion of The Jungle as a literary text, as a historical document in its own right, as a contribution to Progressive-era muckraking, and as an important document in urban, economic, and labor history. A Selected Bibliography is also included. About the series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.

About the Author
Clare Virginia Eby is Associate Professor of English at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of Dreiser and Veblen, Saboteurs of the Status Quo, editor of Theodore Dreiser's The Genius, and co-editor of the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Theodore Dreiser.

FROM OUR EDITORS

This muckraking novel changed the course of history with its gruesomely detailed picture of the meat-packing industry. Historically accurate & humanistic, the book remains an invaluable mirror by which we may still examine ourselves & society today.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The Jungle's influence has been extraordinary for a literary work. Upton Sinclair's 1906 landmark novel is widely credited with awakening the public fury that led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906), a watershed in consumer protection and government legislation. This story of the immigrant experience in the harrowing Chicago stockyards has drawn comment from historians, policymakers, and literary critics, and it is a widely assigned teaching text. The novel is accompanied by an introduction and explanatory annotations.

SYNOPSIS

In this powerful book we enter the world of￯﾿ﾽ￯﾿ﾽJurgis Rudkus, a young Lithuanian immigrant who arrives￯﾿ﾽ￯﾿ﾽin America fired with dreams of wealth, freedom,￯﾿ﾽ￯﾿ﾽand opportunity.

FROM THE CRITICS

New York Times Book Review

Mr. Sinclair in The Jungle has given the world a close, a striking, and, we may say, in many ways a brilliant study of the great industries of Chicago. . . . The language Mr. Sinclair employs is appropriate to the scene, the action, and the characters of his drama. . . . The experienced reader will at once perceive that Mr. Sinclair has taken Zola for his model. The likeness is more than striking -- it fairly forces itself upon the attention of the reader. . . .He has not written a second Uncle Tom's Cabin. -- New York Times review, March 1906; Books of the Century

Library Journal

The Jungle , published by Doubleday, Page in 1906, was originally serialized in the Socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason , which asked Sinclair to investigate conditions in Chicago's meat-packing industry. Salvaged from the cellar of a farmhouse near Girard, Kansas, along with numerous letters and documents, including Sinclair's correspondence with the Appeal to Reason , the serialization is here reproduced with an introduction and an appendix detailing changes made in the Doubleday edition. Scholars will welcome this version of Sinclair's Socialist novel in its original form. For academic libraries. John Budd, Graduate Lib. Sch., Univ. of Arizona, Tucson

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