Choose another writer in this calendar: by birthday from the
calendar. ||(Harry) Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)| American
novelist, playwright, and social critic who gained popularity
with satirical novels. Sinclair Lewis won the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1930, the first given to American. His total
output includes 22 novels and three plays. Though Lewis
criticized at times the American way of living, his basic view
of the "American human comedy" was optimistic. "His central
characters are the pioneer, the doctor, the scientist, the
businessman, and the feminist. The appeal of his best fiction
lies in the opposition between his idealistic protagonists and
an array of fools, charlatans, and scoundrels - evangelists,
editorialists, pseudo-artists, cultists, and boosters." (from
The Quixotic Vision of Sinclair Lewis by Martin Light, 1975)
Harry Sinclair Lewis was born in Sauk Centre, a prairie village
in the heart of Minnesota, as the third son of a country doctor.
His mother, who was the daughter of a Canadian