Sinclair Lewis

Harry Sinclair Lewis (b. 1885–d. 1951) was an astute critic of American society and the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Born in the prairie town of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, Lewis was eager to experience life beyond his hometown. He graduated from Yale University and punctuated his education by trips to England and Panama, as well as work as a janitor at Upton Sinclair’s artistic colony Helicon Hall. Following graduation, he was a newspaperman, a creator of plots for Jack London, and a translator of poetry from the French and German; he also worked for the publishing firms of Frederick Stokes and George H. Doran. Lewis’s first novel, the boy’s adventure tale, Hike and the Aeroplane (1912), was written under a pseudonym. During his lifetime, he wrote over 100 short stories and twenty-three Novels. His first adult novel was the romantic adventure Our Mr. Wrenn (1914). Other novels in this decade included The Trail of the Hawk (1915), about a young pilot; The Job (1917), notable for its portrayal of a successful young businesswoman; and Free Air (1919), an early road novel. Lewis’s life changed forever with the publication of his hugely popular Main Street (1920), a novel that critiqued small-town life. Lewis wrote four other best-selling novels in the 1920s. Babbitt (1922) examined the culture of business and Arrowsmith (1925) delved into the world of medicine, a tribute to his father and brother, who were both doctors. Lewis was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Arrowsmith, but famously declined it, saying that he didn’t believe in literary competition. Elmer Gantry (1927) took on corruption in evangelical religion, while Dodsworth (1929) sent a retired businessman to Europe to reevaluate his life. Lewis’s winning of the Nobel Prize in 1930 was controversial in America, where many felt he was too critical of the United States. However, Lewis’s critiques of American society continued in the second half of his career with such novels as Ann Vickers (1933), which examined women’s suffrage and penal reform, and Cass Timberlane (1945), a meditation on the state of marriage. His two most controversial novels post-1930 were It Can’t Happen Here (1935), about a fascist who is elected president, and Kingsblood Royal (1947), about a white veteran who discovers that he has a black ancestor and becomes ostracized from his middle-class life. Biographer Richard Lingeman said of Lewis, “He wrote with a real moral passion. He really cared.”