  '''''Winesburg, Ohio''''' is a 1919 short story cycle by the American author Sherwood Anderson. The work is structured around the life of protagonist George Willard from the time he was a child to his growing independence and ultimate abandonment of Winesburg as a young man. It is set in the fictional town of Winesburg, Ohio (not to be confused with the actual Winesburg) which is based loosely on the author's childhood memories of Clyde, Ohio.  Mostly written from late 1915 to early 1916, with a few stories completed closer to publication, the cycle was &quot;conceived as a complementary parts of a whole, centered in the background of a single community&quot;Phillips, William L. &quot;How Sherwood Anderson Wrote Winesburg, Ohio&quot;. ''American Literature'' 23 (1951): 7-30. Reprinted in ''Sherwood Anderson: Collection of Critical Essays''. Edited by Walter B. Rideout. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974.. The book is broken down into twenty-two stories, with the first story, &quot;The Book of the Grotesque&quot; serving as an introduction. Stylistically, because of its emphasis on the psychological insights of characters over plot, and plain-spoken prose, ''Winesburg, Ohio'' is known as one of the earliest Modern novels.  ''Winesburg, Ohio'' was received well by critics despite some reservations about its moral tone and unconventional storytelling. Though its reputation waned in the 1930s, it has since rebounded and is now considered one of the most influential portraits of pre-industrial small-town life in the United StatesUpdike, John. &quot;Twisted Apples.&quot; ''Harper's'' 268 (March 1984): 95-97. Reprinted in ''Winesburg, Ohio: A Norton Critical Edition''. Edited by Charles E. Modlin and Ray Lewis White. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996..   ==Plot introduction== ''Winesburg, Ohio'' is a collection of related short stories, which could be loosely defined as a novel. The stories are centered on the protagonist George Willard and the inhabitants of the town of Winesburg, Ohio.  ==Setting== It is widely acknowledged that the fictional model of the book's town, Winesburg, is based on Sherwood Anderson's boyhood memories of Clyde, OhioCrowley, John W. &quot;Introduction&quot;. ''New Essays on Winesburg, Ohio''. Edited by John W. Crowley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990., where Anderson lived between the ages of eight and nineteen (1884-1896)Howe, Irving. ''Sherwood Anderson''. New York: William Sloane Associates, 1951. not the actual town of Winesburg, Ohio located in the same state. This view is supported by the similarities between the names and qualities of several Winesburg characters and Clyde's townspeople, in addition to mentions of specific geographic details of Clyde and its surrounding areasBrillant, Edith &quot;[ Sherwood Anderson, Once of Clyde, Began Life as a Grocery Errand Boy / Old Clyde Residents and Mrs. J.D. Parker Recall Early Life of Writer].&quot; Sandusky Register (Sunday, 29 August, 1926). Accessed 23 April 2011..   It is not known why Anderson chose the name Winesburg for the town in the book. What is known is that the name was not necessarily inspired by the stories themselves. In actuality, Anderson had been using Winesburg, Ohio as a base for Talbot Whittingham, the protagonist of an unfinished novel he had been writing on-and-off for several years prior to the composition of the Winesburg stories.  A direct relationship between the real Clyde and the fictional Winesburg, however, remains the supposition of scholars. Anderson wrote in, ''A Writer's Conception of Realism'' that he reacted with &quot;shock&quot; when he &quot;...heard people say that one of my own books ''Winesburg, Ohio'', was an exact picture of Ohio village life.&quot; The author went on to admit that, &quot;the hint for almost every character was taken from my fellow lodgers in a large rooming house...&quot;Anderson, Sherwood. ''A Writer's Conception of Realism''. Olivet, MI: Olivet College, 1939. Reprinted in ''The Sherwood Anderson Reader''. Edited by Paul Rosenfeld. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947. These lodgers were the &quot;...young musicians, young writers, painters, actors...&quot; and others that lived in proximity to Anderson on the North Side of Chicago and whom he referred to as &quot;The Little Children of the Arts&quot;Anderson, Sherwood. ''Sherwood Anderson's Memoirs''. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1942. Reprinted in ''Winesburg, Ohio: A Norton Critical Edition''. Edited by Charles E. Modlin and Ray Lewis White. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996.. The truth likely lies somewhere in between with memories of Clyde &quot;merging&quot; with Anderson's interactions at the boardinghouseStouck, David. &quot;Anderson's Expressionist Art&quot;. ''New Essays on Winesburg, Ohio''. Edited by John W. Crowley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990..  ==Literary Sources==  Because Sherwood Anderson was so ambiguous about what directly influenced him, it is difficult to say that any specific writer or work inspired him to write ''Winesburg, Ohio'' as a whole. Still, most scholars affirm the obvious connection between Anderson's cycle and the ''Spoon River Anthology'' of Edgar Lee Masters (published in April 1915), which Anderson reportedly stayed up all night to read . Though B.W. Huebsch, Anderson's publisher, sent out a statement, upon the release of ''Winesburg, Ohio'' heading off comparisons between the two works by stating (erroneously, as it turns out) that the Winesburg stories were printed in magazines before the ''Spoon River Anthology'' was published, the similarities in small-town setting, structure, and mood of the works have been noted by several reviewersAnonymous. &quot;A Gutter Would Be Spoon River&quot;. ''New York Sun'' (1 June 1919), p. 3.Broun, Heywood. &quot;Winesburg, Ohio.” ''New York Tribune''. (31 May 1919): 10.Anonymous. &quot;Books of the Fortnight.&quot; ''Dial'', LXVI (25 June, 1919), 666. Cited in &quot;Introduction.&quot; ''The Achievement of Sherwood Anderson: Essays in Criticism''. Edited by Ray Lewis White. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1966., with one going so far as to call ''Winesburg, Ohio'', the ''Spoon River Anthology'' &quot;...put into prose&quot; Anonymous. “Sordid Tales” ''New York Evening Post''. (19 July 1919): III, 3..   Gertrude Stein, whose work Anderson was introduced to by his brother Karl probably initially between 1912 and 1915, is also said to have played a key role in helping shape the unique style found in the stories. Through his interaction (at first satirizing it before ultimately accepting it as essential to his development) with Stein's Three Lives (1909) and Tender Buttons (1914), Anderson found the plain, unambiguous voice that became a staple of his prose . As indicated by the correspondence the two writers developed after the publication of ''Winesburg, Ohio'', variations on the repetition found in Stein's writing in addition to their mutual appreciation for the sentence as a basic unit of prose were also likely features of her writing that Anderson noticed and drew upon in writing his ''Winesburg, Ohio''. Irving Howe summarized the pair's connection aptly when he wrote, &quot;Stein was the best kind of influence: she did not bend Anderson to her style, she liberated him for his own&quot; Howe, Irving. &quot;Sherwood Anderson: Winesburg, Ohio&quot;. ''The American Novel: From James Fenimore Cooper to William Faulkner''. Edited by Wallace Stegner. New York: Basic Books, 1965..  Numerous other writers and works have been mentioned as possible sources from which the elements of ''Winesburg, Ohio'' were drawn, most of them either denied or unacknowledged by Anderson himself. The influence of Theodore Dreiser and the Russians (Chekhov, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy) were discounted by the author, the former for stylistic reasonsAnderson, Sherwood. &quot;Dreiser.&quot; ''Horses and Men''. New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1923., the latter because he had apparently not read them prior to writing his bookCrowley, John W. &quot;Introduction&quot;. ''New Essays on Winesburg, Ohio''. Edited by John W. Crowley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.. While Anderson expressed an admiration for Ivan Turgenev's ''A Sportsman's Sketches'', the affinities between Turgenev's novel and ''Winesburg, Ohio'' (&quot;...both are episodic novels containing loosely bound but closely related sketches, both depend for impact less on dramatic action than on climactic lyrical insight, and in both the individual sketches frequently end with bland understatements that form an ironic coda to the body of the writing&quot; ) may not be a sign of influence since it is not known whether Anderson read the book before writing ''Winesburg, Ohio''. Finally, the regional focus on the mid-west has been linked to the writing of Mark Twain, particularly ''The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' and while Anderson read and revered TwainSpencer, Benjamin T. &quot;Sherwood Anderson: Mythopoeist&quot;. ''American Literature'' 41(1), (March 1969): 1-18, the connection between Twain and ''Winesburg, Ohio'' has largely been made by scholars seeking to place the book within the canon of American literature Anderson, David D. . &quot;[ Mark Twain, Sherwood Anderson, and Midwestern Modernism].&quot; ''Midamerica XXI: The Yearbook of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature''. Edited by David D. Anderson. East Lansing, MI: Midwestern Press, 1994., not necessarily by the author.  ==Composition and Publication==  According to Anderson's account, the first of the stories that became ''Winesburg, Ohio'' (probably &quot;The Book of the Grotesque&quot;) was composed, on the spur of the moment, in the middle of the night, probably while he was staying on the third floor of a rooming house on 735 Cass Street in Chicago: &quot;...it was a late fall night and raining...I was there naked in the bed and I sprang up. I went to my typewriter and began to write. It was there, under those circumstances, myself sitting near an open window, the rain occasionally blowing in and wetting my bare back, that I did my first writing...I wrote it, as I wrote them all, complete in the one sitting...The rest of the stories in the book came out of me on succeeding evenings, and sometimes during the day while I worked in the advertising office...&quot;Anderson, Sherwood. ''Sherwood Anderson's Memoirs''. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1942. Cited in Phillips, William L. &quot;How Sherwood Anderson Wrote Winesburg, Ohio&quot;. ''American Literature'' 23 (1951). Study of his manuscripts show that, though it is probably true that most of the stories were written within a relatively short span of time in late 1915, like a number of facts in Anderson's retelling of his writing process (for instance, his claim that he had written the ''Winesburg, Ohio'' stories after his earlier books were already published), it is inaccurate to say that the final versions of the stories published in 1919 were exactly the same as the ones written whole four years earlier.   In fact, in his seminal article &quot;How Sherwood Anderson wrote ''Winesburg, Ohio'',&quot; William L. Phillips wrote that the manuscript of &quot;Hands&quot; contained &quot;...almost two hundred instances in which earlier words and phrases are deleted, changed, or added to...&quot; though no major structural changes to the story were detected. Additionally, slightly different versions of ten stories that ended up in the book were published by three literary magazines between 1916-1918 as follows:  {| class=&quot;wikitable&quot; style=&quot;margin: 1em auto 1em auto;&quot; |- ! Story Title !! Magazine Name !! Publication Date |- | &quot;The Book of the Grotesque&quot; || ''Masses'' || February 1916 |- | &quot;Hands&quot; || ''Masses'' || March 1916 |- | &quot;Paper Pills&quot; (as &quot;The Philosopher&quot;) || ''Little Review'' || June-July 1916 |- | &quot;The Strength of God&quot; || ''Masses'' || August 1916 |- | &quot;Queer&quot; || ''Seven Arts'' || December 1916 |- | &quot;The Untold Lie&quot; || ''Seven Arts'' || January 1917 |- | &quot;Mother&quot; || ''Seven Arts'' || March 1917 |- | &quot;The Thinker&quot; || ''Seven Arts'' || September 1917 |- | &quot;The Man of Ideas&quot; || ''Little Review'' || June 1918 |- | &quot;An Awakening&quot; || ''Little Review'' || December 1918 |}  Though the stories were published to some acclaim in literary circlesDuffey, Bernard. ''The Chicago Renaissance in American Letters: A Critical History''. East Lansing&quot; Michigan State College Press, 1954. Reprinted in ''The Achievement of Sherwood Anderson: Essays in Criticism''. Edited by Ray Lewis White. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 1966., John Lane, the publisher of Anderson's first two novels, referred to the ''Winesburg, Ohio'' stories as &quot;too gloomy&quot; and refused to publish them. It was not until Francis Hackett, &quot;then editor of ''The New Republic'', who showed the manuscript to Ben Huebsch, owner and editor of a small publishing house in New York,&quot;, that the stories (Huebsch suggested calling them &quot;Winesburg, Ohio&quot;) were brought together and published.  ==Genre== Though there is practically no argument about the unity of structure within ''Winesburg, Ohio'', few scholars have concluded that it fits the standards of a conventional novelIngram, Forrest L. ''[ Representative Short Story Cycles of the Twentieth Century]''. The Netherlands: Mouton &amp; Co., 1971. Mellard, James M. &quot;Narrative Forms in 'Winesburg Ohio' &quot;. PMLA, Vol. 83, No. 5 (Oct., 1968), pp. 1304-1312 . Instead, it is typically placed &quot;...midway between the novel proper and the mere collection of stories,&quot;Cowley, Malcolm. &quot;Introduction to Winesburg, Ohio.&quot; from Anderson, Sherwood. ''Winesburg, Ohio''. NY: Viking Press, 1960. Reprinted in ''Sherwood Anderson: Collection of Critical Essays''. Edited by Walter B. Rideout. Englewood Hills, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974. known as the short story cycle. Aside from its structural unity, the common setting, characters, symbolism and &quot;consistency of mood&quot; are all additional qualities that tie the stories together despite their initial publication as separate tales.   Promoted to younger writers by Anderson himself, ''Winesburg, Ohio'', has served as a representative early example of the short story cycle in American letters. Comparisons between ''Winesburg, Ohio'' and Jean Toomer's ''Cane'' (1923), Ernest Hemingway's ''In Our Time'' (1925), William Faulkner's ''Go Down Moses'' (1942), and several of John Steinbeck's works, among others, demonstrate the pervasiveness of the formal innovations made in Anderson's book.   As well as a short story cycle, the prevalence of George Willard's development as a young man and a writer, has also led some critics to put ''Winesburg, Ohio'' within the tradition of &quot;the American boy book, the Bildungsroman, and the Künstlerroman&quot;.   ==The stories== The collection consists of twenty-two short stories, one of which is in four parts: * The Book of the Grotesque * Hands, ''concerning Wing Biddlebaum'' * Paper Pills, ''concerning Doctor Reefy'' * Mother, ''concerning Elizabeth Willard'' * The Philosopher, ''concerning Doctor Parcival'' * Nobody Knows, ''concerning Louise Trunnion'' * Godliness, a Tale in Four Parts ** I, ''concerning Jesse Bentley'' ** II, ''also concerning Jesse Bentley'' ** III Surrender, ''concerning Louise Bentley'' ** IV Terror, ''concerning David Hardy'' * A Man of Ideas, ''concerning Joe Welling'' * Adventure, ''concerning Alice Hindman'' * Respectability, ''concerning Wash Williams'' * The Thinker, ''concerning Seth Richmond'' * Tandy, ''concerning Tandy Hard'' * The Strength of God, ''concerning the Reverend Curtis Hartman'' * The Teacher, ''concerning Kate Swift'' * Loneliness, ''concerning Enoch Robinson'' * An Awakening, ''concerning Belle Carpenter'' * &quot;Queer,&quot; ''concerning Elmer Cowley'' * The Untold Lie, ''concerning Ray Pearson'' * Drink, ''concerning Tom Foster'' * Death, ''concerning Doctor Reefy and Elizabeth Willard'' * Sophistication, ''concerning Helen White'' * Departure, ''concerning George Willard''.  The novel is written as a third-person narrative with dialogue appearing often, though toward the very end of the book dialogue-intensive scenes involving George increase. Since the work covers George's life from the time he was a child to his growing independence and ultimate abandonment of Winesburg as a young man, the work progresses through each of its twenty-six chapters, with the complexity of his life becoming bigger. The book's opening pages have examples of how the characters will develop throughout the stories. This way the reader can understand better why every character behaves in such strange ways. Hence the length of some scenes and chapters, where Anderson's intent was to capture the subjective experience through images, through the detailed description of each character.  ==Style== The style of ''Winesburg, Ohio'' has often been placed at various points in the spectrum between the Naturalism of Anderson’s literary predecessor William Dean Howells (who died almost one year after the publication of the book), contemporaries Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis, and the Modernist writers of the Lost GenerationLee, Brian. ''American Fiction: 1865-1940''. London: Longman, 1987.. In what has been dubbed a “New Realism,”Geismer, Maxwell. ''The Last of the Provincials: The American Novel, 1915-1925''. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947. ''Winesburg, Ohio'' surpasses the notion of the novel as an &quot;objective report&quot; Hatcher, Harlan. ''Creating the Modern American Novel''. Murray Hill, NY: Farrar &amp; Rinehart, 1935. by making use of &quot;lyrical, nostalgic, evocative,&quot; even sentimental effects of nineteenth-century novelsRitzenberg, Aaron. &quot;Holding on to the Sentimental in Winesburg, Ohio&quot;. Modern Fiction Studies, 56.3 (Fall 2010). Accessed on 02 May 2011 at [ in its depictions of what lies beneath the psychological surface of a midwestern town. In the book, Anderson reoriented the facts typical of realist novels by incorporating his character's inner beliefs about themselves as part of &quot;reality.&quot;Rideout, Walter B. &quot;Introduction.&quot; ''Sherwood Anderson: Collection of Critical Essays''. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974   The symbolism in ''Winesburg, Ohio'' plays a large role in allowing for this reorientation. Beginning with the idea of characters as grotesques whose &quot;...grotesqueness is not merely a shield of deformity; it is also a remnant of misshapen feelings, what Dr. Reefy in the sketch 'Paper Pills' calls 'the sweetness of the twisted apples.' &quot; The irony of the sweet, but twisted (meaning, in the sentimental Victorian tradition, internally inferior), apples is that they are compared to Dr. Reefy's own knuckles that make a habit of stuffing crumpled notes bearing his thoughts unread into his pockets (itself a symbol of the &quot;ineffectuality of human thought&quot;). Wing Biddlebaum, the subject of the story &quot;Hands,&quot; likewise was &quot;...forever striving to conceal [his hands] in his pockets or behind his back&quot;Anderson, Sherwood. ''Winesburg, Ohio: A Norton Critical Edition''. Edited by Charles E. Modlin and Ray Lewis White. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996..  For Wing, his hands were &quot;...the very index of his humanity,&quot;Morgan, Gwendolyn. &quot;Anderson's 'Hands'.&quot; ''Explicator'' 48.1 (Fall 1989): 46-47. with the potential to symbolize a continuum going from a general fear of sexualityBrown, Lynda. &quot;Anderson's Wing Biddlebaum and Freeman's Louisa Ellis.&quot; ''Studies in Short Fiction'' 27.3 (Summer 1990): 413-414. to sublimated homosexualityMurphy, George D. &quot;The Theme of Sublimation in Anderson's ''Winesburg, Ohio''.&quot; ''Modern Fiction Studies'' 13.2 (Summer 1967): 237-246. Wing Biddlebaum and Dr. Reefy are just two examples of how throughout ''Winesburg, Ohio'', Anderson builds myriad themes by adding symbolic significance to gesturesMaresca, Carol J. &quot;Gestures as Meaning in Sherwood Anderson's ''Winesburg, Ohio''.&quot; ''CLA Journal'' 9.3 (Mar. 1966): 279-283., weather conditions and time of day, eventsWestbrook, Max. &quot;Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941)&quot;. ''The Modern American Novel: Essays in Criticism''. Edited by Max Westbrook. New York: Random House, 1966., among other features of the stories.  Another major characteristic of ''Winesburg, Ohio'' that separates its style from Anderson's contemporaries as well as his previous novels is the minimal role of plot. According to critic David Stouk's article &quot;Anderson's Expressionist Art&quot;, &quot;As an expressionist drama, there is little development of a story line in the Winesburg tales in term of cause and effect&quot;. Indeed, it is this de-emphasis of traditional story elements in lieu of experimentation with language that provides both a link and a rift between ''Winesburg, Ohio'' and the novels of the following decadesPhillips, William L. &quot;Sherwood Anderson's Two Prize Pupils.&quot; ''University of Chicago Magazine'' 47 (January 1955): 9-12. Printed in ''The Achievement of Sherwood Anderson: Essays in Criticism''. Edited by Ray Lewis White. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 1966.; whereas the simple, stripped-down vernacular that Gertrude Stein found so appealing in Anderson's writing of the time became an exemplar of quintessential American style most famously associated with Ernest Hemingway, the expressionistic portrayal of emotional states in ''Winesburg, Ohio'' was later, by some critics, considered &quot;undisciplined,&quot; and &quot;vague.&quot; Hoffman, Frederick J. ''The Modern Novel in America: 1900-1950''. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1951)Trilling, Lionel. &quot;Sherwood Anderson&quot;. ''The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society''. New York: Viking Press, 1950. Reprinted in ''Sherwood Anderson: Collection of Critical Essays''. Edited by Walter B. Rideout. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974.  ==Literary significance and criticism== The critical reception to ''Winesburg, Ohio'' upon its publication in 1919 was mostly positiveWhite, Ray Lewis. &quot;Introduction&quot;. ''Sherwood Anderson: A Reference Guide''. Boston: G.K. Hall &amp; Co., 1977.Gerber, Philip. “Winesburg, Ohio: Serendipities of Form.” Old Northwest 15.4 (Winter 1991): 233-243., even effusive (Hart Crane, for example, wrote that &quot;...America should read this book on her knees,&quot;Crane, Hart. “Sherwood Anderson.” ''Pagan'', 4 (September 1919): 60-61. while  H.L. Mencken wrote that ''Winesburg, Ohio'' &quot;...embodies some of the most remarkable writing done in America in our time&quot;Mencken, H.L. “Book of Uncommon Merit.” ''Winesburg, Ohio: A Norton Critical Edition''. Edited by Charles E. Modlin and Ray Lewis White. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996.). Despite criticism that Anderson’s &quot;sordid tales&quot; were humorless, and &quot;mired...in plotlessness&quot;, ''Winesburg, Ohio'' did well enough that it was reprinted several times, selling a total of about 3,000 copies by 1921Phillips, William L. “The Editions of Winesburg, Ohio”. ''Sherwood Anderson: Centennial Studies''. Edited by Hilbert H. Campbell and Charles E.a Modlin. Troy, NY: Whitston Publishing Company, 1976..   The popularity of ''Winesburg, Ohio'' among readers and critics has remained fairly high, only fluctuating slightly with Sherwood Anderson’s literary reputation which, while steady through the 1920s,  began to decline in the 30s, until William L. Phillips, following the lukewarm reception of ''The Letters of Sherwood Anderson'' in 1953, commented that &quot;...Anderson is out of fashion.&quot;Phillips, William L. &quot;Sherwood Anderson's Two Prize Pupils.&quot; ''University of Chicago Magazine'' 47 (January 1955): 9-12. Printed in The Achievement of Sherwood Anderson: Essays in Criticism. Edited by Ray Lewis White. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 1966. Throughout that decade, however, the author and his most popular book were the subject of a &quot;...re-examination, if only as a neglected literary ancestor of the moderns.&quot;Rideout, Walter B. &quot;Sherwood Anderson,&quot; in ''Fifteen Modern American Authors: A Survey of Research and Criticism''. Edited by Jackson R. Bryer. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1969. Cited in ''New Essays on Winesburg, Ohio''. Edited by John W. Crowley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Into the 1960s and moving forward, this &quot;re-examination&quot; became a &quot;reevaluation&quot; by critics who today generally consider ''Winesburg, Ohio'' a modern classic.  In 1998, the Modern Library ranked ''Winesburg, Ohio'' 24th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.  ==Literary and cultural connections== Ray Bradbury has credited ''Winesburg, Ohio'' as an inspiration for his book ''The Martian Chronicles''.&quot;Run Fast, Stand Still, or, The Thing at the Top of the Stairs, or, New Ghosts from Old Minds,&quot; ''How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy &amp; Science Fiction,'' edited by J.A. Williamson, Writers Digest Books, 1986; collected in ''Zen in the Art of Writing''.Weller, Sam. [ &quot;Ray Bradbury, The Art of Fiction No. 203.&quot;] ''The Paris Review'' 192 (Spring 2010). Accessed 22 April, 2011.  H. P. Lovecraft said that he wrote the short story &quot;Arthur Jermyn&quot; after he &quot;had nearly fallen asleep over the tame backstairs gossip of Anderson's ''Winesburg, Ohio''.&quot;H. P. Lovecraft, letter to Edwin Baird, c. October 1923; cited in S. T. Joshi and David Schultz, ''An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia'', p. 90.  Israeli writer Amos Oz writes in his biography ''A Tale of Love and Darkness'' that ''Winesburg, Ohio'' had a powerful influence on his writing, showing him that literature must not necessarily always be about heroes. Only after reading Anderson did he find the courage to start writing.  Philip Roth's 2008 novel ''Indignation'' is set, in part, at Winesburg College in Winesburg, Ohio.  His protagonist holds a part-time job as a waiter at the &quot;New Willard House&quot;, evoking the protagonist, George Willard, of Anderson's book.  Henry Miller references the book on the first page of his novel ''Sexus'' (of ''The Rosy Crucifixion'' series).  In the 1985 film ''Heaven Help Us'' Danni reads a passage from &quot;Sophistication&quot; to her grief-stricken father.  In the ABC television series, Pretty Little Liars, the book is given to the character Aria Montgomery by her English teacher Ezra Fitz with whom she is having an affair. He writes the inscription 'When you need to leave Rosewood... Ezra' on the first page.  ==TV and theatrical productions== A TV version was made in 1973 starring Joseph and Timothy Bottoms as George Willard, Jean Peters as Elizabeth Willard, Curt Conway as Will Henderson, Norman Foster as Old Pete, Dabbs Greer as Parcival, Albert Salmi as Tom Willard, Laurette Spang as Helen White, and William Windom as Dr. Reefy.   A musical of the same name won the Barrymore Award for &quot;Outstanding Musical&quot; in 2006.  