Quote Investigator®

Upton Sinclair? W. E. B. Du Bois? George Orwell? George Bernard Shaw? Ann Petry? Morris Edmund Speare? Richard Hunt? Ludwig Lewisohn? Edmund Wilson? Anonymous?

Question for Quote Investigator: Advocates often extoll their visions with strong-willed certainty. Insistent artists are accused of preaching and propagandizing. Yet, this criticism is sometimes provocatively embraced. Here are three assertions:

(1) All art is propaganda.
(2) All great art and literature is propaganda.
(3) All truly great art is propaganda.

This first adage has been attributed to muckraking U.S. activist Upton Sinclair, pioneering U.S. sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois, and influential English writer George Orwell. The second adage has been credited to Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. The third adage has been ascribed to U.S. novelist Ann Petry. I am having trouble tracing the provenance of these sayings. Would you please help me to find solid citations?

Reply from Quote Investigator: Upton Sinclair, W. E. B. Du Bois, and George Orwell did employ the first saying. Also, George Bernard Shaw and Ann Petry did use the second and third sayings, respectively. Detailed citations for this group are given further below. However, the origin of this family of statements is older.

The earliest match found by QI appeared in “The National Magazine: An Illustrated American Monthly†of Boston, Massachusetts in 1916.  The periodical printed a letter from Richard Hunt who was a poet and poetry magazine editor. Hunt favored poetry that was uplifting and highlighted beauty and happiness. In the following passage the phrase “an Eastman kodak†referred to a photograph. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:¹

An Eastman kodak can show us the picture of a ragged child with starvation and joylessness on its face—and so can poetry. But poetry can do more; it can show the child’s soul as it leaps up laughing, free from the ugliness of poverty and the life that has no happiness. People have a right to be happy!

They have a right to everything which can make them happy. But how can they be happy till they see each other as poetry, instead of as an Eastman kodak sees them? Poetry, like all art, is propaganda; it keeps showing more and more people pictures of the part of them where their aspirations are.

I work with poetry because I feel that here is a thing which will eventually free me and all other people from the misery and oppression of ugliness.

Thus, Richard Hunt viewed poetry and all art as a vehicle for positive propaganda which would lead to the betterment of humankind.

A wide variety of people have used the saying under examination. Here is an overview with dates:

1916: Poet and editor Richard Hunt
1923: Professor of English Morris Edmund Speare
1924: Literary critic Ludwig Lewisohn
1925: Political activist Upton Sinclair
1926: Sociologist and activist W. E. B. Du Bois
1932: Poet and literary scholar William Ellery Leonard
1933: Playwright George Bernard Shaw (All great art and literature is propaganda)
1939: Novelist and essayist George Orwell
1950: Novelist and journalist Ann Petry (All truly great art is propaganda)

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.