Authors Posters & Prints, “Sin...-Sit...-”
for the literature, language arts and social studies classrooms, home schoolers and scholars.

May Sinclair, née Mary Amelia St. Clair
b. 8-24-1862; Rock Ferry, Cheshire, England
d. 11-14-1946; Buckinghamshire (Parkinson's Disease)

Suffragist May Sinclair was the pseudonym of Mary Amelia St. Clair, a popular writer of about two dozen novels, short stories, poetry and critiques. The literary term ‘stream of consciousness’ is attributed to her.

In World War I she volunteered for an ambulance corps and suffered from shell shock.

May Sinclair quotes ~
• “The War will leave none of us as it found us.”
• “At the moment you are no longer an observing, reflecting being; you have ceased to be aware of yourself; you exist only in that quiet, steady thrill that is so unlike any excitement that you have ever known.”

• The Divine Fire
• May Sinclair: A Modern Victorian

Upton Sinclair
b. 9-20-1878; Baltimore, Maryland
d. 11-25-1968; Bound Brook, New Jersey

American author Upton Sinclair achieved much popularity in the first half of the 20th century for his investigations of social conditions, and notariety for his advocacy of socialist views and anarchist causes, such as his arrest for reading the First Amendment (free speech) at a labor rally in 1923.

Sinclair gained particular fame for his novel, 'The Jungle', which dealt with conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry and caused a public uproar that contributed to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act in 1906.

Upton Sinclair quotes ~
• “What life means to me is to put the content of Shelley into the form of Zola. The proletarian writer is a writer with a purpose; he thinks no more of “art for art's sake” than a man on a sinking ship thinks of painting a beautiful picture in the cabin; he thinks of getting ashore — and then there will be time enough for art.” Cosmopolitan (October 1906)
• “All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescapably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda.” Mammonart - an Essay in Economic Interpretation Ch. 2 Who Owns the Artists? (1925)
• “I am not a giant physically; I shrink from pain and filth and vermin and foul air, like any other man of refinement; also, I freely admit, when I see a line of a hundred policeman with drawn revolvers flung across a street to keep anyone from coming on to private property to hear my feeble voice. But I have a conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our cowardice.” Letter to the Los Angeles Chief of Police (1928-04-07)
• “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

• Literary Techniques Posters - Imagery

Isaac Bashevis Singer
b. 11-21-1902; Warsaw, Poland
d. 7-24-1991; Florida

Short story author and novelist Isaac Bashevis Singer was one of the leading figures in the Yiddish literary movement. He received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1978 “for his impassioned narrative art which, with roots in a Polish-Jewish cultural tradition, brings universal human conditions to life.”

Singer was also a committed vegetarian.

Isaac Bashevis Singer quotes ~
• “A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.”
• “The waste basket is the writer's best friend.”
• “When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer.”
• “Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.”
• “I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens.”
• “If you keep on saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet.”
• “The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.”
• “The New England conscience doesn't keep you from doing what you shouldn't - it just keeps you from enjoying it.”
• “We must believe in free will, we have no choice.”

Dame Edith Sitwell
b. 9-7-1887; Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England
d. 12-9-1964; London (cerebral hemorrhage)

Edith Sitwell was a poet and critic most interested in the distinction between poetry and music.

She also provoked much criticism - both for her poetry and for her appearance - she had angular features, a height of 6' and dressed in brocade, velvet, turbans and rings.

Edith Sitwell quotes ~
• “Poetry is the deification of reality.”
• “The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.”
• “The trouble with most Englishwomen is that they will dress as if they had been a mouse in a previous incarnation they do not want to attract attention.”
• “Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.”
• “I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty... but I am too busy thinking about myself.”
• “Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.”

• Edith Sitwell: Collected Poems