Author won Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930
Sinclair Lewis was born in 1885 in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, and graduated from Yale University in 1908. His college career was interrupted by various part-time occupations, including a period working at the Helicon Home Colony, Upton Sinclair's socialist experiment in New Jersey. He worked for some years as a freelance editor and journalist, during which time he published several minor novels. But with the publication of Main Street (1920), which sold half a million copies, he achieved wide recognition. This was followed by the two novels considered by many to be his finest, Babbitt (1922) and Arrowsmith (1925), which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1926, but declined by Lewis. In 1930, following Elmer Gantry (1927) and Dodsworth (1929), Sinclair Lewis became the first American author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for distinction in world literature. This was the apogee of his literary career, and in the period from Ann Vickers (1933) to the posthumously published World So Wide (1951) Lewis wrote ten novels that reveal the progressive decline of his creative powers. During his last years Sinclair Lewis wandered extensively in Europe, and after his death in Rome in 1951 his ashes were returned to his birthplace.
By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
“Sinclair Lewis’s best—and most misunderstood—novel . . . Lewis’s
Babbitt is . . . one of a small group of American fictional
creations who, in the early years of the 20th century, stand in
their very different ways as landmarks in the story of the social
evolution of our country: Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, Wharton’s Lily
Bart, Booth Tarkington’s Alice Adams, with Gatsby on the horizon.”
—Robert Gottlieb, The New York Times Book Review
“It is Babbitt that is [Sinclair Lewis’s] most perfect creation. .
. . We have to be thankful for the minor miracle that after almost
a century, Babbitt still speaks to us all.” —Azar Nafisi, in The
Republic of Imagination
“The equal of any novel written in English in the present
century.” —Virginia Woolf, The Saturday Review
“Babbitt is now well into its nineties, but George F. Babbitt still
lives and breathes and harrumphs. It’s impossible, especially
during any American election season, to read a newspaper or turn on
the television without hearing the echoes of his voice. Babbitt is
the original American everyman.” —Nathaniel Rich, from the Foreword
First published in 1922, Babbitt is an authentic modern American classic, a biting satire of middle-American values that retains much of its poignancy today. George F. Babbitt, Lewis's outwardly successful but inwardly unhappy real estate salesman, still seems real. His story makes engrossing reading and is ideal for audio listening. With Babbitt himself at the center of every scene, it is impossible for listeners plagued by frequent interruptions to lose track of the story line. Narrator Wolfram Kandinsky has a voice that many listeners may find grating; however, his reading here conveys an appropriate ironic tone that is especially apt when he reads Babbitt's own lines. Recommended for general fiction collections. Kent Rasmussen, Thousand Oaks, CA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
"Sinclair Lewis's best-and most misunderstood-novel . . . Lewis's
Babbitt is . . . one of a small group of American fictional
creations who, in the early years of the 20th century, stand in
their very different ways as landmarks in the story of the social
evolution of our country: Dreiser's Sister Carrie, Wharton's Lily
Bart, Booth Tarkington's Alice Adams, with Gatsby on the horizon."
-Robert Gottlieb, The New York Times Book Review
"It is Babbitt that is [Sinclair Lewis's] most perfect creation. .
. . We have to be thankful for the minor miracle that after almost
a century, Babbitt still speaks to us all." -Azar Nafisi, in
The Republic of Imagination
"The equal of any novel written in English in the present century."
-Virginia Woolf, The Saturday Review
"Babbitt is now well into its nineties, but George F.
Babbitt still lives and breathes and harrumphs. It's impossible,
especially during any American election season, to read a newspaper
or turn on the television without hearing the echoes of his voice.
Babbitt is the original American everyman." -Nathaniel Rich,
from the Foreword
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