Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Cry for Justice | 1915 | Upton Sinclair | Buy |
| 2 | Writing Los Angeles | 2002 | Upton Sinclair | Buy |
The Cry for Justice (1915) is the larger and more significant of these two anthologies. Sinclair edited this massive collection of social protest literature, gathering writings from philosophers, poets, novelists, and reformers across twenty-five languages and five thousand years of history. The first edition ran to nearly 900 pages, with an introduction by Jack London and illustrations drawn from social protest art. Contributors included Euripides, Dante, Voltaire, William Blake, Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, H.G. Wells, and dozens of others. Sinclair wanted to create a single volume that would prove social injustice was not a modern invention but a constant in human history.
Writing Los Angeles (2002) is a different kind of anthology entirely. Edited by David L. Ulin for the Library of America, it collects fiction, poetry, essays, journalism, and diary entries from over seventy writers about the city of Los Angeles. Sinclair is one of many contributors, alongside authors like Raymond Chandler, Joan Didion, and Nathanael West. The book traces the literary history of L.A. from the early twentieth century through the 1990s and won a California Book Award. For Sinclair’s connection, his writing about the Southern California oil industry and his years living in Pasadena made him a natural fit for a collection about the literary life of the city.