The Jungle - Upton Sinclair 1906 - Doubleday, New York - First Edition ‘Pierces the thickest skull and most leathery heart.’ - Winston Churchill

‘The brutally grim story of a Slavic family who emigrates to America,
The Jungle tells of their rapid and inexorable descent into numbing poverty, moral degradation, and social and economic despair.

‘Sinclair's nightmarish narrative of the immigrant Rudken family instigated a series of legislative measures that were highly successful. His lurid scenes of a meat packing industry that ground both rates and fingers into sausage aroused the middle class to demand sanitary conditions for food preparation.

Yet far less effective by comparison was his severe indictment of the working conditions that regularly reduced laborers to impoverished insanity. As Sinclair later wryly observed, “
I aimed for the heart and hit the stomach of America”.’ – Emory Elliot, The Columbia Literary History of the United States.
  First edition, first issue, with ‘Published February, 1906.’ on copyright page, the ‘1’ on that line without break (second issue showed broken type). It was also published with ‘Jungle Publishing Co.’ imprint & variant cover; both were printed by Doubleday, Page, & Co. and issued simultaneously.

Octavo (book size 20.2x13.2cm), pp. [10] 413 [5]. In publisher's olive green cloth, lettered in white to spine and front panel, with embossed illustrations in black and white to front panel, and in black to spine, all edges trimmed.
  Condition: Near fine, light soiling to rear panel, small amount of rubbing to white on spine and front board.   Ref: 110708   Price: HK$ 9,400