The publication of The Jungle thrust Sinclair into the national limelight. For the first time in his career, a serious work of fiction made money for him. Sinclair's one major disappointment about his novel's reception was that The Jungle did not ignite the public into a frenzy over socialism.
Sinclair used his earnings to establish Helicon Hall, a commune for writers in Englewood, New Jersey. Helicon Hall was to be the epitome of cooperation, where people would live day to day looking out for the best interests of one another while simultaneously pursuing individual interests. Less than a year into its existence, Helicon burned to the ground, and Sinclair abandoned the project.
In 1908, Sinclair founded a socialist theatre to provide a site for the performance of plays with socialist messages, including his own. He continued to write a number of books, though none captured the fancy of the reading public and most were privately printed. His marriage, which was essentially a sham, continued to be a distraction to Sinclair's writing, and he tried to divorce his wife, but the courts refused his request, so Sinclair moved to Europe. The loss of Helicon Hall, combined with his inability to resolve his differences with his wife, pushed Sinclair harder to pursue a divorce. He later provided a fictional account of his marriage in the novel Love's Pilgrimage (1911). In Europe, he wrote two novels and finally received a divorce in1911 with little difficulty.
