Sinclair Lewis was the first American to win a Nobel Prize for Literature. He is best known for his works Main Street and Babbitt. He earned a Pulitzer Prize nomination for both of these works and later declined to accept a Pulitzer for Arrowsmith. He was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
He was born Harry Sinclair Lewis in Sauk Centre, Minnesota in 1885, and although he was proud of his Midwestern hometown, he traveled a great deal in order to expose himself to many aspects of American life. After graduating from Yale University in 1908, he began his career as a writer of romantic stories and poetry. As he traveled,...