Anderson-Winesburg Ohio

In this moving collection of interrelated stories Ohio-born Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) illuminates the loneliness and frustration — spiritual emotional and artistic — of life in a small American town. Winesburg Ohio subtly portrays as well a young writer's coming of age searching for love yearning for a less stifling world.Through the eyes of young George Willard the inner lives of many of Winesburg's inhabitants open to us. Before George leaves the community we have learned much about his mother Elizabeth his friend Helen White his teacher Kate Swift and other Winesburg residents — the lonely sensitive Dr. Reefy the tormented Rev. Charles Hartman and the enigmatic Wing Biddlebaum among them.Through Anderson's art their stories are woven into a powerful portrayal of community life and ironically of the isolation its close atmosphere can engender. A great success on its first publication in 1919 Winesburg Ohio profoundly influenced a generation of fiction writers with its deeply moving poetic realism. It endures as a classic portrait of American life.