Q 01/05

Upton Sinclair said he aimed The Jungle at the public's heart and by accident hit it where?

A) In the head

B) In the stomach

C) In the liver

D) In the throat

Answer · why

B) In the stomach

"I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach," he wrote in October 1906, annoyed that readers worried about their dinner ra...

Q 02/05

From which country, then part of the Russian Empire, do Jurgis Rudkus and his family emigrate to Chicago in The Jungle?

A) Lithuania

B) Poland

C) Hungary

D) Ukraine

Answer · why

A) Lithuania

Lithuania, which is why the novel's wedding feast follows old-country rules and the family is fleeced by a realtor who speaks their language fluently.

Q 03/05

How long did Upton Sinclair spend in disguise inside Chicago's packing plants before writing The Jungle?

A) One week

B) Seven weeks

C) One year

D) Five years

Answer · why

B) Seven weeks

Seven weeks in 1904 were enough: he put on overalls and posed as a worker to get inside the plants, with a socialist paper covering his costs.

Q 04/05

Which socialist weekly from Girard, Kansas, funded Sinclair's stockyards research and first ran The Jungle as a serial?

A) The Coming Nation

B) The Masses

C) Appeal to Reason

D) The Worker

Answer · why

C) Appeal to Reason

Appeal to Reason advanced Sinclair $500 to go to Chicago and ran his story in instalments through 1905, so its subscribers read the novel a year befor...

Q 05/05

Which publisher finally issued The Jungle as a book in 1906, after a string of houses rejected it as too shocking?

A) Macmillan

B) Doubleday

C) Scribner's

D) Harper

Answer · why

B) Doubleday

Doubleday, Page took it on just as Sinclair was about to print a cut-down subscriber edition himself; a Macmillan reader had called it "gloom and horr...