Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson (1876–1941) worked in advertising and owned a successful paint supply company before he suffered a nervous breakdown and abandoned his business career and his family to devote himself full time to writing. His groundbreaking story cycle, Winesburg, Ohio, is widely regarded as one of the greatest works of twentieth-century literature. Anderson, according to William Faulkner, “was the father of my generation of American writers.”