Main Street

Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 - January 10, 1951) was an American novelist, short-story writer, playwright and social-critic. He was born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, a small town with a population of 2800, most of which was Swedish and Norwegian. After receiving his bachelor's degree from Yale University in 1908, he started working in publishing houses and newspapers. He published his first book Hike and the Aeroplane in 1912. He published five books before the commercial success of Main Street which was published on October 23, 1920. The book sold 180, 000 copies instantly and surpassed the 2 million mark within a few years. Lewis followed up this first great success with Babbitt (1922), a novel that satirized the American commercial culture and boosterism. His other publications are Arrowsmith (1925), Mantrap (1926), Elmer Gantry (1927), The Man Who Knew Coolidge (1928), and Dodsworth (1929). He wrote 24 novels, more than 70 short stories and several plays and poetry collections. Though the novel Main Street became a commercial success but did not win a Pulitzer Prize, which so disappointed Lewis that he declined the Pulitzer Prize when it was awarded to his novel Arrowsmith in 1925. Later in 1930 he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature and became the first American to receive the award.