Visions and Versions All authors are inspired to write, and once inspired the author's work is a vision and a version of their influences. Every author is influenced from personal experiences, historical events, intellectual events, other writers, and literary movements to form their own work. The major theme in Anderson's collection of short stories called "Winesburg, Ohio' is voiceless small town people trying to find a voice. Many influences were predominating in the forming of Anderson's theme. This theme is a visions and a version of the industrial revolution, other writers, literary movements, and ideas from Sigmund Freud. The first important aspect in understanding what influenced Sherwood Anderson to begin writing is his personal history.
Sherwood Anderson was born in 1876 in Camden, Ohio, but he grew up mostly in Clyde, Ohio, which became the model for the fictional town of Winesburg, Ohio. Anderson's mother died when he was eighteen of tuberculosis, and Anderson set out for Chicago at the age of nineteen.
American writer Theodore Dreiser.
Portrait of Theodore Dreiser
English: First edition title pageAnderson's mother left a large impact on him, and "Winesburg, Ohio" was dedicated in her honor. "To the memory of my mother, Emma Smith Anderson, whose keen observations on the life about her first awoke in me a hunger to see beneath the surface of lives, this book is dedicated"(Anderson). When Anderson first arrived in Chicago, he worked odd jobs, and in 1898 he served in the Spanish-American war. Once Anderson completed high school at Wittenberg Academy in Springfield, Ohio, he went to work as an advertising copywriter in Chicago. He married Cornelia Lane, and they had three children together. Anderson became the owner of a mail-order paint business, and then in 1912, torn between his responsibilities and his drive to create, he had a breakdown that has become legendary says Michael Meyer, the editor...