Mary Craig Sinclair was a writer and the wife of Upton Sinclair

Upton Sinclair

Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...

.

Early life and education

She was born Mary Craig Kimbrough in Greenwood, Mississippi

Greenwood, Mississippi

Greenwood is a city in and the county seat of Leflore County, Mississippi, United States, located at the eastern edge of the Mississippi Delta approximately 96 miles north of Jackson, Mississippi, and 130 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee. The population was 15,205 at the 2010 census. It is the...

 on February 12, 1882, the oldest child of Mary Hunter (Southworth) and her husband Allan McCaskill Kimbrough, a judge. Beginning at age 13, Mary studied at the Mississippi State College for Women

Mississippi University for Women

Mississippi University for Women, also known as MUW or simply the "W" is a four-year coeducational public university located in Columbus, Mississippi. It was formerly known as Industrial Institute and College and later Mississippi State College for Women...

 (starting with what were essentially high school classes) and graduated from the Gardner School for Young Ladies in New York City in 1900. Her father was a wealthy attorney with banking interests, and a member of one of the oldest elite Mississippi families.

Career

Kimbrough (called Craig in many accounts) began writing and contributed regularly to newspapers and magazines. On a trip with her mother to a sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan

Battle Creek, Michigan

Battle Creek is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan, in northwest Calhoun County, at the confluence of the Kalamazoo and Battle Creek Rivers. It is the principal city of the Battle Creek, Michigan Metropolitan Statistical Area , which encompasses all of Calhoun county...

, they attended a lecture by Upton Sinclair

Upton Sinclair

Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...

, who had published The Jungle

The Jungle

The Jungle is a 1906 novel written by journalist Upton Sinclair. Sinclair wrote the novel with the intention of portraying the life of the immigrant in the United States, but readers were more concerned with the large portion of the book pertaining to the corruption of the American meatpacking...

, where they met him. Kimbrough talked with him about her writing and he began to teach her through their deepening relationship.

At the time of the Kimbrough-Sinclair marriage on April 21, 1913, the New York Times reported that Mary Craig Kimbrough was best known in the South for The Romance History of Winnie Davis, her biography of Winnie Davis, the daughter of Jefferson Davis

Jefferson Davis

Jefferson Finis Davis , also known as Jeff Davis, was an American statesman and leader of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, serving as President for its entire history. He was born in Kentucky to Samuel and Jane Davis...

. But in her autobiography, Craig said she never wanted to publish it because she found that "emotionalism and sentimentality among Confederate veterans made writing an objective study impossible." As she recalled, her future husband said, "Your book is terrible! You can't write. I can't honestly encourage you."

According to Craig, at her insistence Upton Sinclair published Sylvia (1913) under his name. Craig said that she wrote the novel about a Southern girl based on her own experiences. In her 1957 memoir, she described how she and her husband had collaborated on the work:

"Upton and I struggled through several chapters of Sylvia together, disagreeing about something on every page. But now and then each of us admitted that the other had improved something. I was learning fast now that this novelist was not much of a psychologist. He thought of characters in a book merely as vehicles for carrying his ideas."

Once married, she said they collaborated on a sequel, Sylvia's Marriage (1914), which was also published under Upton Sinclair's name, by John C. Winston Company, Philadelphia.

The writers disagreed about authorship. In his 1962 autobiography, Upton Sinclair wrote: "[Mary] Craig had written some tales of her Southern girlhood; and I had stolen them from her for a novel to be called Sylvia."

Marriage and family

Kimbrough married Upton Sinclair on April 12, 1913. At the time her friends said she did not share her new husband's "liberal ideas on matrimony." He had once said that marriage is "nothing but legalized slavery...for the average married woman."

Her husband, Upton Sinclair, credited her with helping him to "write and publish three million books and pamphlets, flowing into every country in the world." In his autobiography, he portrayed Mary Sinclair as someone "who may not always have believed in what her husband was doing but cheerfully helped him do it."

Mental telepathy

Upton Sinclair's Mental Radio (1930) reported that Mary Sinclair had telepathic powers. He included her testimony describing her technique and her assertion that others could acquire the same ability. She described the methodology:

The kind of concentration I mean is putting the attention on one object...and holding it there steadily. It isn't thinking; it is inhibiting thought....Give your body a "suggestion" to the effect that you will relax your mind and your body, making the body insensitive and the mind blank. ....You want a message from the person who is sending you a message; you do not want a train of subconscious day dreams. The subconscious answers questions, and its answers are always false; its answers come quietly like a thief in the night. But the "other" mind, the "deep" mind, answers questions too, and these answers come with gladness and conviction....These two minds seem different from each other. One lies and rambles; the other sings and is truthful.

Works

• Sinclair included one of Mary Craig Sinclair's sonnets, "Sisterhood," in his 1915 anthology The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest.
• Craig Sinclair privately published a collection of her sonnets in the 1920s.
• Southern Belle: A Personal Story of a Crusader's Wife (1957). Her autobiography covers her life from her birth into privileged Mississippi
  Mississippi
  Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
  
   society to her married life.

According to one reviewer, Sinclair reports on her early life with "sentimentality...that does no real harm. Indeed, it is rather touching." "Mrs. Sinclair," it said, "has produced a book interesting enough to suggest that she and Upton Sinclair learned from each other and significant enough to be worth attention." Another said her book told "a truly romantic as well as wonderfully goofy story" that would prove "irresistible to students of U.S. life and manners."

Sinclair had become extremely frail by the mid-1950s, and died in Monrovia, California

Monrovia, California

Monrovia is a city located in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains in the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles County, California, United States. The population was 36,590 at the 2010 census, down from 36,929 at the 2000 census...

, on April 26, 1961, at the age of 78.