Book Description
ENDURING LITERATURE ILLUMINATED BY PRACTICAL SCHOLARSHIP Upton Sinclair's unflinching chronicle of crushing poverty and oppression set in Chicago in the early 1900s. EACH ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES: • A concise introduction that gives readers important background information • A chronology of the author's life and work • A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context • An outline of key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations • Detailed explanatory notes • Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work • Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction • A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to their full potential. SERIES EDITED BY CYNTHIA BRANTLEY JOHNSON

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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