Sherwood Anderson is best known for his collection of short stories Winesburg, Ohio, in which each story centers around a character or characters from his fictional rural town. Many of the characters know each other and appear in multiple stories, sharing the intimate hopes and dreams of Winesburg’s inhabitants in a changing world. Anderson drew on his experiences of living in different parts of the Midwest, especially small towns, when he was younger. Many of his characters are variations of real people and real events, and their experiences serve as the foundation for his stories. The characters serve as an “Everymen,” intended to represent stock characters with whom the audience can identify. The bulk of the American population at the time of Anderson’s writing of “Death in the Woods” (1933) was white and not centralized in large urban areas. The Dust Bowl had just decimated much of the farmland to the west of Ohio, and the ramifications of that environmental disaster could be felt across the country.

Anderson grew up the youngest of seven children in a modest household in rural Ohio, and he worked odd jobs throughout his youth to help provide for the family.