Fun Facts Friday: Sinclair Lewis

Sinclair Lewis (7, February, 1885 – 10 January, 1951) was a writer and a playwright from Sauk Centre, Minnesota .

Books by Sinclair Lewis*

1. Mr. Lewis had a rough childhood. His father, a physician and strict disciplinarian, could not related to his sensitive son.  Mr. Lewis even tried to run away from home at age 13 to,  hoping to become a drummer boy in the Spanish-American War.
2. The author graduated from Yale University in 1908. It took him longer to receive his bachelor’s degree because he took time off to work in a cooperative living colony in Englewood, NJ and to visit Panama.
3. His first published works, short stories and poetry, were in the Yale Literary Magazine.
4. His first book, Hike and the Aeroplane, published in 1912 was written under the nom de plume Tom Graham
5. In the 1920s Mr. Lewis’ writing style was considered revolutionary.
6. Mrs. Lewis, Grace Livingston nee Hegger, was an editor for Vogue Magazine. The couple had a son named Wells Lewis, after British author H. G. Wells.
7. Wells Lewis served as an lieutenant in the US Army during World War II and was killed in action in France
8. His novel, Main Street (1920) was projected to sell 25,000 copies. The novel sold 180,000 copies in six months, and two million within a few years. The novel made the Lewis family rich.
9. He declined the Pulitzer Prize, which was awarded for his novel Arrowsmith (1925) because he was upset that Main Street didn’t win.
10. Mr. Lewis was the first writer from the United States to get the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Books by Sinclair Lewis*

Zohar – Man of la Book
*Ama­zon links point to an affil­i­ate account