The Jungle

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair The Jungle is a 1906 novel written by the American journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair (1878-1968). Sinclair wrote the novel to portray the lives of immigrants in the United States. Many readers were most concerned with his exposure of practices in the American meatpacking industry during the early 20th century, based on an investigation he did for a socialist newspaper. The book depicts poverty, the absence of social programs, unpleasant living and working conditions, and the hopelessness prevalent among the working class, which is contrasted with the deeply rooted corruption of people in power. A review by the writer Jack London called it, the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of wage slavery. Sinclair was considered a muckraker, or journalist who exposed corruption in government and business. He first published the novel in serial form in 1905 in the socialist newspaper, Appeal to Reason, between February 25, 1905, and November 4, 1905. In 1904, Sinclair had spent seven weeks in 1904 gathering information while working incognito in the meatpacking plants of the Chicago stockyards for the newspaper. It was published as a book on 26 February 1906 by Doubleday and in a subscribers’ edition. A film version of the novel was made in 1914, but it has since become lost.