Sinclair Lewis

The first of Sinclair Lewis's great successes, Main Street shattered the sentimental American myth of happy small-town life with its satire of narrow-minded provincialism. Reflecting his own unhappy childhood in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, Lewis's sixth novel attacked the conformity and dullness he saw in midwestern village life. Young college graduate Carol Milford moves from the city to tiny Gopher Prairie after marrying the local doctor, and tries to bring culture to the small town. But her efforts to reform the prairie village are met by a wall of gossip, greed, conventionality, pitifully unambitious cultural endeavors, and—worst of all—the pettiness and bigotry of small-town minds. Lewis's portrayal of a marriage torn by disillusionment and a woman forced into compromises is at once devastating social satire and persuasive realism. His subtle characterizations and intimate details of small-town America make Main Street a complex and compelling work and established Lewis as an important figure in twentieth-century American literature.

A satiric look at American society following the First World War, Babbitt is one of Sinclair Lewis's best-known works. Real estate agent George Babbitt says all the right things, has all the right friends, and belongs to all the right clubs. Though he's a man on the rise, Babbitt finds his days empty and yearns for romance and an escape from his tightly ordered life. A winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Sinclair Lewis wrote stories heavily influenced by America's urbanization, industrialization and loss of frontier in the post-war period. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

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