Marriage and Family
Sinclair married Meta Fuller, who had been a friend of his in childhood and whose family was one of the First Families of Virginia, in 1902. Sinclair had a son with Fuller. They named the child David. He was born on December 1, 1901. Around 1911, Meta left Sinclair for the poet Harry Kemp, later known as the Dunes Poet of Provincetown, Massachusetts.
In 1913 Sinclair married Mary Craig Kimbrough (1883–1961), a woman from an elite Greenwood, Mississippi, family who had written articles and a book on Winnie Davis, the daughter of Confederate States of America President Jefferson Davis. He met her when she attended a lecture by him about The Jungle. In the 1920s, they moved to California. They were married until her death in 1961.
After Craig's death in 1961, Sinclair married Mary Elizabeth Willis (1882–1967).
Sinclair was opposed to sex outside of marriage. He viewed even sex within marriage as only being justified by procreation. He told Meta that only the birth of a child gave marriage "dignity and meaning". However, he did have an affair with Anna Noyes while married to Meta. He wrote an unpublished novel about the affair called Love's Progress, a sequel to Love's Pilgrimage. After that, his wife had an affair with John Armistead Collier, a theology student from Memphis.
Read more about this topic: Upton Sinclair
Famous quotes containing the words marriage and/or family:
“In all perception of the truth there is a divine ecstasy, an inexpressible delirium of joy, as when a youth embraces his betrothed virgin. The ultimate delights of a true marriage are one with this.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Providing for one’s family as a good husband and father is a water-tight excuse for making money hand over fist. Greed may be a sin, exploitation of other people might, on the face of it, look rather nasty, but who can blame a man for “doing the best” for his children?”
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