The Road to Wellville is about Americans' tendency to be attracted by reform movements and revivals. The author Upton Sinclair is mentioned directly in Boyle's novel as a guest at the Battle Creek Sanitarium. Sinclair published The Jungle in 1906, which is almost exactly the time of the action of Boyle's novel. The Jungle is a Naturalis tic portrayal of the corruption, filth, and exploitation in the meat packing industry in Chicago at the beginning of the twentieth century; and Sinclair's novel represents a precedent for Boyle's treatment of the food industry in The Road to Wellville. Upton Sinclair eventually became a socialist politician, and Boyle's novel examines how nutritional fads have been fostered by both socialists and capitalists. Charles Dickens is also mentioned in The Road to Wellville. Like Upton Sinclair in the United States, Dickens intended his writing to be a vehicle for social reform...