Winesburg, Ohio

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time"e;Here [is] a new order of short story,"e; said H.L. Mencken when Winesburg, Ohio was published in 1919.  "e;It is so vivid, so full of insight, so shiningly life-like and glowing, that the book is lifted into a category all its own."e;  Indeed, Sherwood Anderson's timeless cycle of loosely connected tales--in which a young reporter named George Willard probes the hopes, dreams, and fears of the solitary people in a small Midwestern town at the turn of the century--embraced a new frankness and realism that ushered American literature into the modern age.  "e;There are moments in American life to which Anderson gave not only the first but the final expression,"e; wrote Malcolm Cowley.  "e;Winesburg, Ohio is far from the pessimistic or morbidly sexual work it was once attacked for being.  Instead it is a work of love, an attempt to break down the walls of loneliness, and, in its own fashion, a celebration of small-town life in the lost days of good will and innocence."e;

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time"e;Here [is] a new order of short story,"e; said H.L. Mencken when Winesburg, Ohio was published in 1919.  "e;It is so vivid, so full of insight, so shiningly life-like and glowing, that the book is lifted into a category all its own."e;  Indeed, Sherwood Anderson's timeless cycle of loosely connected tales--in which a young reporter named George Willard probes the hopes, dreams, and fears of the solitary people in a small Midwestern town at the turn of the century--embraced a new frankness and realism that ushered American literature into the modern age.  "e;There are moments in American life to which Anderson gave not only the first but the final expression,"e; wrote Malcolm Cowley.  "e;Winesburg, Ohio is far from the pessimistic or morbidly sexual work it was once attacked for being.  Instead it is a work of love, an attempt to break down the walls of loneliness, and, in its own fashion, a celebration of small-town life in the lost days of good will and innocence."e;