For nearly a century, the original version of Upton Sinclair's classic
novel has remained almost entirely unknown. When it was published in
serial form in 1905, it was a full third longer than the censored,
commercial edition published in book form the following year. That
expurgated commercial edition edited out much of the ethnic flavor of
the original, as well as some of the goriest descriptions of the
meat-packing industry and much of Sinclair's most pointed social and
political commentary. The text of this new edition is as it appeared in
the original uncensored edition of 1905. It contains the full 36
chapters as originally published, rather than the 31 of the expurgated
edition. A new foreword describes the discovery in the 1980s of the
original edition and its subsequent suppression, and a new introduction
places the novel in historical context by explaining the pattern of
censorship in the shorter commercial edition.