Clyde and ‘Winesburg, Ohio’: the small town behind an American classic
Sherwood Anderson grew up in Clyde, eight miles from Bellevue, and drew on it for his 1919 book of linked stories about small-town life.
Readers around the world know Winesburg, Ohio, a fictional town of lonely people and small dramas. Readers in Sandusky County know it is really Clyde.
Sherwood Anderson, born in 1876 in Camden, Ohio, moved with his family to Clyde as a boy and lived there into his late teens. Years later, working in Chicago, he wrote a set of linked stories about a small Ohio town and its residents, seen through a young reporter named George Willard. Published in 1919, Winesburg, Ohio influenced writers such as Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner and remains on college reading lists.
The real town
Anderson changed names and blended details, but readers have long noticed that Winesburg’s geography matches Clyde’s, from the railroad to the main street. When the book came out, some people in Clyde were not pleased with how small-town life was portrayed. Over time, the town embraced the connection.
The Clyde Public Library keeps a collection about Anderson, and the Clyde Heritage League has preserved local history. The book itself is in the public domain and can be read free at Project Gutenberg.
Clyde today
Clyde, a city of about 6,000, is best known today as home to Whirlpool’s huge washing machine plant, which we covered in our story on the factory. The plant made Clyde one of the largest manufacturing towns in the region.
Clyde and Bellevue share a stretch of U.S. 20 and a long sports rivalry. The two towns’ histories are closely tied through the railroads and farms that surround them, as we described in Around old Bellevue.
Why the book lasts
Anderson’s stories are about ordinary people who feel they cannot say what they mean. More than a century later, that rings true in towns of any size. More in Community.