BVG on Sinclair Lewis

  Sinclair Lewis Newsletter : St. Cloud, Minn., St. Cloud State College, 1969 The Man from Main Street : A Sinclair Lewis Reader - Selected Essays and Other Offerings 1904 - 1950. Ed. Harry E. Maule and Melville H. Cane, NY, Random House, 1953 Schorer, Mark : Sinclair Lewis, A collection of critical essays, Englewood Cliffs, NY, Prentice Hall, 1962 Benet, William Rose : The Earlier Lewis, Saturday Review of Literature, X, Jan 20, 1934 Breasted, Charles : The Sauk Centricities of Sinclair Lewis, Saturday Review of Literature, XXXVII, Aug 14, 1954 Cowley, Malcolm : “Nobel Prize Oration”, New Republic, LXXXVIII Aug 19, 1936 Davis Elmer : Sinclair Lewis's Hub of Genius, Saturday Review of Literature, Jan 27, 1934 Miller, Perry : “The Incorruptible Sinclair Lewis", Atlantic, CLXXXVII, Apr. 1951 Hughes, Serge : “From Main Street to World So Wide”, Commonweal, Ch. III, 1951

  Abrahamson, Mark Ephraim H. Mizuruchi & Cartoon A Hornung: Stratification and Mobility NY, MacMillan, NY, 1976 Allen, Frederick, Lewis: Only Yesterday Allen, Walter : The Modern Novel in Britain and the United States, Ep> Dutton, NY, 1964 Beach, Joseph Warren : The 20th C Novel, NY, Appleton - Century Crafts, 1932 Bensman, Joseph and Vidich, J. Arthur : The New American Society - The Revolution of the Middle Class - Quadrangle Books, 1971 Beritz, L : The Good Life - The Meaning of Success for the American Middle Class, Alfred Knopf, NY, 1989 Bingham Alfred, M : Insurgent America, NY, Farar, 1932 Bloomin : The Emergence of Middle Class, 1760 - 1900, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1989 Brooks, Van Wyck : The Confident Years (1885-1915), Dent, London, 1953 Cook, M, David and Gaig G. Swagger : The Small Town in American Literature, NY, Dodd Mead & Co, 1969 Deutsh, Martin, Ed. 1923 : Social Class - Deutsh, Martin, Irwin Kate C. Arthur Jinsen Race and Psychological Development, N...

  Hike and the Aeroplane : Stokes, 1912 Our Mr. Wrenn : The Romantic Adventures of a Gentleman, New York, Harper, 1914 The Trails of the Hawk : A Comedy of Seriousness of Life, New York, Harper, 1915 The Job : An American Novel, New York, Jonathan Cape Free Air : New York, Harcourt, 1919 Innocents : A story Lovers, New York, Harper, 1917 The Main Street : The Story of Carol Kannicott, New York, Harcourt, 1920 Babbitt : New York, (1922) Arrowsmith : New York, New York, Harcourt The Man Who Knew Coolidge : Being the soul of Lowell Schmaltz, New York, Harcourt Brace & Co, 1928 Dodsworth : New York, Harcourt Brace & Co, 1929 Ann Vickers : Garden City, Double Day Doran, 1933 Work of Art : Garden City, Double Day Doran, 1935 It Can’t Happen Here : Garden City, NY, Sun Dial Press, 1935 The Prodigal Parents : Garden City, Double Day Doran, 1938 Bethel Merriday : Garden City, Double Day Doran, 1940 Gideon Planish : New York, Random Press, 1943 Cass Timberlane (A Novel of husbands an...

One far-reaching after effect of the Civil War was the growth of each town into a self-contained unit, with a built-in economy of its own. The division of labor setting in, there developed a class-consciousness among the residents of each village or town. The distance between any two given villages remaining inaccessible to a traveling businessman, the growth of railways had brought them nearer. The Aristocrat, the rich farmer, had established his hold over the widely spreading village economies of the unwieldy territory of the Middle West, the area between the Mississippi and Missouri river dividing line and the Rockies to the edge of the Pacific. While the eastern part of America had developed an Industrial and Banking system, the West remained exclusively Adrarian in economy. The relative poverty of the latter economy had resulted in an exodus of the population into the East. Also the channeling of finances into the marginal small business had resulted in the take over by Giant busi...

When “Main Street” (1920) was published, President Warren Harding had desired to establish a Rotary Club in every city, town and hamlet in order to foster the ideals of freedom and the progress of civilization. He took over the reins of the country that very year. The small town was the cradle of contemporary American Culture, with its inherent complacency and provincialism. The first literary trumpet blasts of deliverance from such narrowness had already been sounded the previous year (1919) with the publication of Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio”, and H L Mencken’s “Prejudices”. Sinclair Lewis’ harsh indictment of village life, the middle class and the philistine in America had a ready receptive audience. In spite of the lengthy tradition of realistic portrayal before “Main Street”, the village still persisted in American lore as the abode of rustics, the home of honest virtue, simplicity and friendliness. Meredith Nicholson in 1912 made a classic statement of everything to be ...