Mary Craig Sinclair
| Mary Craig Kimbrough Sinclair | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
February 12, 1882 Greenwood, Mississippi |
| Died | April 26, 1961 (aged 79) Monrovia, California |
| Occupation | Novelist, writer, political activist |
| Nationality | American |
Mary Craig Sinclair (1882–1961) was a writer and the wife of Upton Sinclair.
She was born Mary Craig Kimbrough in Greenwood, Mississippi on February 12, 1882, the oldest child of Mary Hunter (Southworth) and Allan McCaskill Kimbrough, a judge. Beginning at age 13, Mary studied at the Mississippi State College for Women (starting with what were essentially high school classes) and graduated from the Gardner School for Young Ladies in New York City in 1900. Her father was a wealthy attorney with banking interests, and a member of one of the oldest elite Mississippi families.
Kimbrough (called Craig in many accounts) began writing and contributed regularly to newspapers and magazines. On a trip with her mother to a sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, they attended a lecture by Upton Sinclair, who had published The Jungle, where they met him. Kimbrough talked with him about her writing and he began to teach her through their deepening relationship.
At the time of the Kimbrough-Sinclair marriage on April 21, 1913, the New York Times reported that Mary Craig Kimbrough was best known in the South for The Romance History of Winnie Davis, her biography of Winnie Davis, the daughter of Jefferson Davis. But in her autobiography, Craig said she never wanted to publish it because she found that "emotionalism and sentimentality among Confederate veterans made writing an objective study impossible." As she recalled, her future husband said, "Your book is terrible! You can't write. I can't honestly encourage you."
According to Craig, at her insistence Upton Sinclair published Sylvia (1913) under his name. Craig said that she wrote the novel about a Southern girl based on her own experiences. In her 1957 memoir, she described how she and her husband had collaborated on the work:
"Upton and I struggled through several chapters of Sylvia together, disagreeing about something on every page. But now and then each of us admitted that the other had improved something. I was learning fast now that this novelist was not much of a psychologist. He thought of characters in a book merely as vehicles for carrying his ideas."
Once married, she said they collaborated on a sequel, Sylvia's Marriage (1914), which was also published under Upton Sinclair's name, by John C. Winston Company, Philadelphia.
...
Wikipedia