Main Street: The Story of Carol Kennicott

New York: Harcourt Brace and Howe, 1920.

Sold

Hardcover. First edition. Very light wear, a near fine copy, lacking the rare dustwrapper. Lewis's first major success, a realistic portrayal of Midwestern life, and the first of several important novels for which he became the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. *Johnson High Spot of American Literature.*.

Item #98979

Ask a Question

item image

Item #98979 Main Street: The Story of Carol Kennicott. Sinclair LEWIS.

Sinclair Lewis
birth name: Harry Sinclair Lewis
born: 2/7/1885
died: 1/10/1951
nationality: USA

View Reference Info

Biography

American novelist and social critic who punctured American complacency with his broadly drawn, widely popular satirical novels. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930, the first given to an American. - Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literaturemore

Collecting tips:

Sinclair Lewis is a major and very interesting American author whose collectibility seems to be highly volatile. He was by far one of the most respected and popular authors of the 1920-1950s, but the interest in him seemed to decline after his death, only to revive again beginning in the 1990s. His first book, a novel for boys, written under the pseudonym Tom Graham, Hike and the Aeroplane, (1912), is rare in jacket, and fairly expensive without, but might be only of marginal interest to the literary collector. All of his early mainstream books, The Trail of the Hawk, (1914 - "M-N" on copyright page), Our Mr. Wrenn, (1914 - "M-N" on copyright page), The Job, (1917 - "B-R" on copyright page), The Innocents, (1917 - "F-R" on copyright page), and Free Air, (1919), are very scarce in jacket. The franchise book is probably Main Street, (1920 - first issue jacket without reviews of this title on the front flap), which is very expensive in jacket. Babbitt, (1922), Arrowsmith (1925 - the book, not the band, issued in both a trade and a limited edition), and Elmer Gantry (1927), round out his most sought after books, but he has plenty more as well.more