Sinclair Lewis Biography and List of Works

American novelist, playwright, and social critic who gained popularity with his satirical novels. Sinclair Lewis won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930, the first given to an American. His total output includes 22 novels and three plays. Though Lewis criticized at times the American way of living pessimistically, his basic view was optimistic, presenting an American human comedy after the examples of Balzac and Dickens.

"His central characters are the pioneer, the doctor, the scientist, the businessman, and the feminist. The appeal of his best fiction lies in the opposition between his idealistic protagonists and an array of fools, charlatans, and scoundrels - evangelists, editorialists, pseudo-artists, cultists, and boosters."
(from The Quixotic Vision of Sinclair Lewis by Martin Light, 1975)

Lewis was born in Sauk Centre, in the heart of Minnesota, as the third son of a country doctor. His mother, who was the daughter of a Canadian physician, died when Lewis was six years old. His father remarried a year later. Lewis's stepmother read to him and he had access to the three or four hundred volumes, exclusive of medical books, in his father's library. At the age of 13 Lewis ran away from home to become a drummer boy in the Spanish-American War, but his father caught up with him at the railroad station, and brought the boy home.

In 1902 Lewis entered the Oberlin Academy, but then moved to Yale University and started to contribute the Yale Literary Magazine. On one summer vacation Lewis travelled to England on a cattle boat and in another year, dissatisfied with college, he went to Panama in search of a job on the canal. He also worked as a janitor at Upton Sinclair's socialist commune Helicon Hall (1906-07), and tried to earn his living as a free-lance writer in New York for some time.

Lewis received his M.A. in 1908 and worked for publishing houses and various magazines in Iowa, Carmel, San Francisco, Washington D.C. and New York City. In Greenwich Village he associated occasionally with such radicals as John Reed and Floyd Dell. For a short time he was a member of the Socialist Party. Lewis's first published book was HIKE AND THE AEROPLANE, which appeared in 1912 under the pseudonym Tom Graham. In 1914 Lewis married Grace Livingston Hegger, an editor at Vogue. For the following two years he worked as an editor and advertising manager at the book publishing firm George H. Doran Company. In 1916 he abandoned his job and travelled with his wife around the country.

After publishing two novels, Lewis devoted himself entirely to writing. He gained fame with the novel MAIN STREET (1920), a study of idealism and reality in a narrow-minded small-town. "Main Street is the continuation of main Streets everywhere." It meant cheap shops, ugly public buildings, and citizens who were bound by rigid conventions. The protagonist, Carol Kennicott, is an emancipated woman, who is eventually ostracized from Gopher Prairie, a town that is far from the romantic picture of open and democratic American community. The book had parallels with the author's own early life, and gained controversial success. Lewis claimed that the book was read "with the same masochistic pleasure that one has in sucking an aching tooth."

Lewis's next novel, BABBITT (1922), was a devastatingly perceptive portrait of a midwestern businessman. George F. Babbitt yearns for freedom but after a brief period of rebellious behaviour, he returns to the fold of his clan of good fellows. 'Babbittry' soon became synonymous with unthinking commercialism.

"To George F. Babbitt, as to most prosperous citizens of Zenith, his motor-car was poetry and tragedy, love and heroism. The office was his pirate ship but the car his perilous excursion ashore."
(from Babbitt)

ARROWSMITH (1925), depicting the life of a doctor caught between his idealism and commercialism, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, which Lewis declined. He explained that because the award was meant for books that celebrate American wholesomeness, his novels, which are critical, should not be awarded the prize. With the scientific aspects of the book Lewis collaborated with Dr. Paul De Kruif. He then used experts for technical advice in other books.

"Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize."
(from the author's letter, 1926)

ELMER GANTRY (1927) was an attack on the hypocritical ministers. DODSWORT (1929) and ANN VICKERS (1933) examined the corruption of social services. In 1925 Lewis divorced from his first wife and married three years later Dorothy Thompson, a newspaper correspondent. During the 1930s Lewis devoted considerable attention to the theatre. His last major work, IT CANT HAPPEN HERE (1935), portrayed a fascist coup d'état in America. In the next decade Lewis's writing habits remained unchanged: he wrote his book in a month and then spent time until he was ready to start another one. In 1942 he was divorced from his second wife. Two years later his older son was killed in World War II combat in France.

Although Lewis continued to publish books at regular rate for the next twenty years, only occasionally did his novels capture large audiences. Among Lewis's later works are the highly conservative THE PRODIGAL PARENTS (1938), CASS TIMBERLANE (1945), and KINGBLOODS ROYAL (1947), which deal with racial prejudice. Lewis spent his final years in Europe, suffering from failing health after a life of heavy drinking and a serious skin disease, which irritated his already short temper. He died in alone Rome on January 10, 1951. His last novel, WORLD SO WIDE, was published posthumously.

For further reading: With Love from Gracie by G.H. Lewis (1955); Sinclair Lewis: An American Life by M. Schorer (1961); Sinclair Lewis by N. Grebstein (1962); Dorothy and Red by V. Sheean (1963); Sinclair Lewis by R. O'Connor (1971); The Art of Sinclair Lewis by D.J. Dooley (1971); Sinclair Lewis by J. Lundqvist (1973); The Quixotic Vision of Sinclair Lewis by Martin Light (1975); Sinclair Lewis by H. Smith (1977): Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt, ed. by P. Fish (1985); Critical Essays on Sinclair Lewis by M. Bucco (1986); Sinclair Lewis, ed. by H. Bloom (1987); Sinclair Lewis' Arrowsmith, ed. by H. Bloom (1988); The Rise of Sinclair Lewis, 1920-1930 by James Hutchisson (1996); Sinclair Lewis: New Essays in Criticism, ed. by James Hutchisson (1997)

Main Street and other depictions of small-town life: Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio (1919); Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River Anthology (1916), Thornton Wilder's Our Town (1938) - See also: H.L. Mencken

HIKE AND THE AEROPLANE, (1912)
I'M STRANGER TO MYSELF AND OTHER STORIES, (1962)
STORM IN THE WEST, (1963)
MAIN STREET AND BABBITT, (1992)
IF I WERE BOSS: THE EARLY BUSINESS STORIES OF SINCLAIR LEWIS, (1997)