Harry Sinclair Lewis was born on February 7, 1885 in the small town of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, the youngest of three sons of Edwin J. Lewis and Emma Kermott Lewis. His mother, Emma, was always ill, having to spend much of her time away from home. In 1891, when he was five years old, she died. In less than a year, his father Edwin, a country doctor, married a second time – this time to Isabel Warner. Unfortunately, “Harry Lewis’ boyhood was curiously loveless, vexatious” (Schorer, 5).

Growing up, Lewis suffered a life of ridicule by not only his fellow peers, but also by his elders:

He was homely, ill-coordinated, astigmatic, redheaded, a stumbling, noisy, awkward boy. He was inept at hunting and fishing, could hardly swim, was shunned in boys’ games and spor

ts, derided by his fellows and patronized by his elders. He was nearly friendless and was early given to solitary tramps about the countryside and to wide, indiscriminate reading. He yearned to be in some place both more colorful and more kindly than Sauk Centre (Schorer, 5).

In 1925, when Arrowsmith was published, critics thought that a new Sinclair Lewis had come forth. But in actuality, it simply allowed the idealism inside Lewis that had always been present to prevail. The praise for Arrowsmith was universal. It was described in one word: American, and the most American of the generation at that.

With that said, it is safe to say that Sinclair Lewis is one of the greatest American writers of all time. Not only was he the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930, but he was also the first American author to prove what it is to be American: diverse, opinionated, yet united. Maybe, though, he never intended to be portrayed that way. Maybe he just wrote what he wrote, and the readers, consequently, turned out to be the proof. That can reasonably be conferred, seeing as how Americans were so diversely opinionated on the subject matter of books such as Main Street and Babbitt. In contrast, though, the more that people fixed their opinions on him, the more they became united, buying his book b

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