John Ahouse-Upton Sinclair Collection

Upton Beall Sinclair (September 20, 1878-November 25, 1968) is best known for his “muckraking” novel, The Jungle, but he wrote close to 100 books in his lifetime and scores of articles in a variety of genres. These included novels, non-fiction journalism, poetry, plays and others. His topics ranged from the meat-packing industry to journalism, from telepathy to the Spanish Civil War. A famous socialist, Sinclair appeared in the news often and was part of protests against Rockefeller Mines in Colorado in 1913, the protest on Liberty Hill in San Pedro in 1923 that led to his arrest and the founding of the ACLU in Southern California, and his 1934 run for governor of California.

Born 1935 in New York City, John Ahouse attended Columbia University, with a major in German. The decade following was spent for the most part in Berlin, as a student, with the US military, and then as translator for a German pharmaceuticals firm. Masters degrees in linguistics (Univ. of Texas) and librarianship (Univ. of Southern California) brought him to California State University in Long Beach for a dozen years, where he served as archivist and developed his interest in Upton Sinclair. Subsequently, as co-head of Special Collections at Doheny Library (University of Southern California), he published his bibliography of Sinclair in 1993. Since retirement in 2005, Ahouse has been associated with the Wende Museum in Culver City, California. He has published not only on Sinclair but also on composer Hector Berlioz, novelist Hamlin Garland, and on the postwar division of Germany.