The Jungle by SINCLAIR, Upton - 1906

New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1906. Hardcover. Near Fine. First edition, Doubleday, Page & Company issue, first issue with unbattered type on copyright dates. Pictorial boards. Modest foxing on the foredge and endpapers, a little bit of rubbing to the publisher's name on the spine, but else an unusually nice, near fine copy, mush less rubbed than usual. One of the few books ever published to have a direct, immediate and significant impact on American society and thought. Although Sinclair's intent was to expose the abusive labor conditions in the Chicago stockyards as a means of promoting socialism, the American public was more horrified by the novel's vivid depiction of unsanitary conditions in the slaughterhouses and meat-processing plants, and as a result the U.S. Pure Food and Drug Act was passed. A nicer than usual copy of one of the most famous, influential, and enduring of all muckraking novels.