Sinclair Lewis – 1885-1951

Lewis’ fiction combined realism with broadly drawn satire to skewer complacent and obtuse aspects of American society. His masterpiece is the 1920 Main Street, which presents a full-length portrait of mid-American society. Babbitt, which followed in 1922, is a story of American complacency—so persuasive that the word “Babbittry” entered the lexicon of American social criticism. In 1930, Lewis became the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.