“There is a something that broods over our Mid American landscapes that can save us all if we will but give our selves…”

  A masterwork of intricate creation, The Triumph of the Egg is Sherwood Anderson's brilliant series of short stories concerning life in small town USA.

Anderson’s peculiar genius was to probe the tics and quirks of his characters until their private histories emerged. It includes some of his greatest works: "The Egg," a story about the struggle to find success and happiness in the American Midwest; "I'm a Fool," about a young man who sabotages his chance at love because of his own feelings of inferiority, and "I Want to Know Why," about the confusion and desperation felt by a boy entering adulthood.

Weaving memories of his small-town youth into a series of interrelated stories, Anderson realized a stunning set of variations on themes of isolation, frustration, and encroaching obsession.

SHERWOOD ANDERSON (1876-1941) was an American novelist and short story writer. He may be most remembered for his influential effect on the next generation of young writers, as he inspired Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Thomas Wolfe. His influence upon later American writers has been enormous. Ernest Hemingway and Joyce Carole Oates both praised him as a writer who brought a new sensitivity to the American short story.

"If he touches you once he takes you, and what he takes he keeps hold of; his work becomes part of your thought and parcel of your spiritual furniture forever." So it is, for me and many others, with Sherwood Anderson.”

 —Irving Howe