Sinclair Lewis

Main Street, by Sinclair Lewis, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies of contemporary...

Babbitt is the middle-class, average-American protagonist of this novel. Though he conforms to society and attempts to scale the social ladder, Babbitt gradually becomes dissatisfied with the American Dream. He branches out to test other, more rebellious ways of life. He returns to where he began, disillusioned with the equally rigid standards he has found among the non-conformists, though still holding an openness to individuality in his heart. As...

Bored of the parties and luxuries that come with her socialite lifestyle, Claire Boltwood longs for something more authentic in her life. Desperate for adventure, Claire and her father decide to travel from New York City to the Pacific Northwest in their automobile, a new privilege enjoyed by the rich. Though he is a clever businessman, Claire's father knows nothing about cars, so he encourages Claire to drive, challenging the gender stereotypes of...

In Main Street and Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis drew on his boyhood memories of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, to reveal as no writer had done before the complacency and conformity of middle-class life in America. These remarkable novels combine brilliant satire with a lingering affection for the men and women who, as Lewis wrote of Babbitt, want "to seize something more than motor cars and a house before it's too late." Main Street (1920), Lewis's first triumph,...

A burned-out New York lawyer's vacation in the Canadian wilderness takes a troubled detour in this novel by the Nobel Prize—winning author of Main Street. Lawyer Frank Prescott is exhausted. The forty-year-old bachelor works late into the night, poring over documents. When he sleeps, he wakes up in a panic. Not even a round of golf at his country club or a Broadway show helps calm him down. He just wants to escape the city and feel as though he...

An anthology of stories on the corporate world, written earlier this century by Sinclair Lewis. Set in New York, the subjects range from back-stabbing to office romance.

One man's fervent pursuit of wealth and power leads him to religion for profit in the evangelist tents of the 1920's Midwestern Corn Belt.