Home > People > Sherwood Anderson

Sherwood Anderson

Sherwood Anderson was born in Camden, Ohio in 1876. Similar to many writers of this epoque, Anderson spent some time in the army serving in Cuba during the Spanish-American war of 1898. He had his first short-story, The Rabbit-Pen, published in Harper’s in 1914 and over the next few years had a few other texts published, including Winesburg, Ohio which is loosely based on his childhood memories of the town he grew up in. It wasn’t until 1921 that he travelled to Europe where he encountered some of the celebrated writers of the time including James Joyce and Gertrude Stein.

Callaghan was a great admirer of Anderson in high school and he describes Anderson’s work as bringing ‘the world so close’ (Callaghan 1963). He is torn in his loyalties when he reads a piece written by Hemingway which satirizes Anderson and feels that although there is, perhaps, the means to mock Anderson’s style, it is cruel of Hemingway to do so. Upon attending a party in Greenwich Village, Callaghan bumps into Anderson and seizes the opportunity to express his admiration of Anderson’s work and the influence it had on his own writing.


References: John E. Basset, Sherwood Anderson: An American Career, Rosemount Publishing & Printing Corp. 2006.

Callaghan, Morley. That Summer in Paris: Memories of Friendships with Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald, 1963. http://fitzgerald.narod.ru/bio/callaghan-thatsum.html

Image: http://www.orrt.org/anderson/