# Sinclair Lewis *American novelist (1885–1951), 1930 Nobel laureate in Literature, born in Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minnesota* Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) wrote novels, short stories and plays. He was born in [[Sauk Centre]], [[Minnesota]].[^1] Sauk Centre is a city of Stearns County.[^2] In 1930 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The citation, as Wikipedia gives it, honored him "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters."[^3] His most widely read novels include *[[Main Street]]* (1920), *Babbitt* (1922), *Arrowsmith* (1925), *Elmer Gantry* (1927), *Dodsworth* (1929) and *[[It Can't Happen Here]]* (1935).[^4] Wikipedia states that he was the first author from the United States, and the first from the Americas, to receive the prize.[^5] Sauk Centre's heritage page carries the same claim. The project's at-issue entry AI-Stearns-092 records that the claim had not been confirmed from the [[Nobel Foundation]]'s own text when the entry was compiled.[^6] Lewis titled his Nobel lecture *The American Fear of Literature* and delivered it on December 12, 1930. In it he said that America had passed from rustic colony to world empire "without having in the least altered the bucolic and Puritanic simplicity" of its self-image. The lecture also criticized the American Academy of Arts and Letters and university literature departments.[^7] Five years earlier he had refused a [[Pulitzer Prize]]. The Pulitzer organization's own published account records both that refusal and the earlier overriding of its jury's recommendation for *Main Street*.[^8] ## Who Lewis's parents were Edwin J. Lewis, a physician, and Emma Kermott Lewis. He had two older siblings, Fred (born 1875) and Claude (born 1878).[^9] His mother died in 1891, and his father married Isabel Warner the following year.[^9] Lewis left home in late 1902 to spend a year at Oberlin Academy, preparing to enter Yale University.[^9] He began at Yale in 1903 and took his bachelor's degree in 1908. In between, he worked at Upton Sinclair's Helicon Home Colony in Englewood, New Jersey, and travelled to Panama.[^9] Lewis moved to New York in fall 1910 to work for the publisher Frederick A. Stokes. The following year he joined the New York chapter of the Socialist Party of America.[^10] In 1914 he married Grace Livingston Hegger, an editor at *Vogue*.[^11] Their son, Wells Lewis (1917–1944), was killed in action in France on October 29, 1944, while serving as a U.S. Army lieutenant.[^11] Lewis and Hegger divorced on April 16, 1928. On May 14 of that year he married the correspondent and columnist Dorothy Thompson.[^11] They had a son, Michael Lewis (1930–1975), who became a stage actor. The couple divorced in 1942.[^11] ## What Lewis's first book was *Hike and the Aeroplane*, published in 1912 under the pen name Tom Graham.[^10] *Our Mr. Wrenn*, published in 1914, was his first serious novel.[^10] The Pulitzer Prizes' own account describes how a 1921 jury recommended *Main Street* for the prize. [[Columbia's trustees]] overrode that recommendation on "wholesome" grounds.[^8] In 1926 Lewis refused the Pulitzer for *Arrowsmith*. He cited "the Main Street burglary" and objected that the criteria judged books "not according to their actual literary merit but in obedience to whatever code of Good Form may chance to be popular at the moment."[^8] *Babbitt* gave the language a word. [[Merriam-Webster]] defines *Babbitt* as "a person and especially a business or professional man who conforms unthinkingly to prevailing middle-class standards." It treats *Babbittry* as the noun for that practice.[^12] The dictionary traces the word to "George F. Babbitt, character in the novel Babbitt (1922) by Sinclair Lewis," and gives its first known use as 1921.[^12] In his December 1930 Nobel lecture, Lewis credited Theodore Dreiser with clearing a path toward honesty in American fiction. In March 1931 he publicly accused Dreiser of plagiarizing a book by Dorothy Thompson, and the two men fought.[^13] In 1944 Lewis campaigned for the American Academy of Arts and Letters to recognize Dreiser. This was the same body his lecture had criticized.[^13][^7] *It Can't Happen Here* depicts a fascist elected to the American presidency.[^13] The [[University of Chicago Law School]] has published a treatment of the novel titled *"It Can't Happen Here": The Lessons of History*.[^14] A related book chapter is held in the school's Chicago Unbound repository.[^15] ## When In 1937, after an alcoholic binge, Lewis entered the Austen Riggs Center, a psychiatric hospital in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. He left after ten days.[^13] He died in Rome on January 10, 1951, aged 65.[^11] He was cremated, and his remains were buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Sauk Centre. *World So Wide* (1951) was published after his death.[^11] His standing among literary scholars fell through the 20th century. Interest in his work revived in the 2010s.[^16] After the 2016 United States presidential election, *It Can't Happen Here* reached the top of [[Amazon]]'s best-seller list.[^16] The U.S. Postal Service has honored him with a stamp in its Great Americans series.[^16] A bust of Lewis by Joseph Kiselewski, commissioned in 1960, is in the Great River Regional public library in Sauk Centre.[^16] ## Where Sauk Centre's heritage page invites visitors to "step back in time and experience the enduring spirit of this quintessential American town." It calls the city "a place where heritage and hospitality go hand in hand."[^6] The page lists the [[Original Main Street Historic District]] (built 1920–1947) among four National Register properties in the city. It names the [[Sinclair Lewis Boyhood Home]] (1889) as a National Historic Landmark.[^6] The district was listed on the National Register in 1994. It covers ten blocks with about 90 contributing properties.[^17] ## How many Wikipedia names six of Lewis's novels as his popular works.[^4] After the Nobel Prize, he wrote eleven more novels, and ten of them were published in his lifetime.[^13] Three of his novels, *Babbitt*, *Mantrap* and *Cass Timberlane*, were issued as Armed Services Editions during the Second World War.[^4] ## In the at-issue record The project files four at-issue entries on Lewis under its Stearns package, in the section *The Jurisdiction Gap & the Unrecorded Record Edition*. Each entry is anchored to the March 2025 presidential action *Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos*.[^18] - **AI-Stearns-040** pairs two facts. Lewis was born in Sauk Centre, Stearns County, on February 7, 1885. In his Nobel lecture, he described America's passage "from rustic colony to world empire" with its self-image unaltered.[^1][^2][^7] - **AI-Stearns-091** sets two institutions' readings of the same work side by side. The Nobel citation praised Lewis's art of description and his new types of characters. The dictionary records "Babbitt" as a word for a man who "conforms unthinkingly to prevailing middle-class standards."[^3][^12] - **AI-Stearns-092** concerns the "first American laureate" claim on the town's heritage page. It marks the claim as unconfirmed against the Nobel Foundation's own text.[^5][^6] - A fourth entry, **AI-Stearns-090**, logs a 2015 newspaper headline about Lewis and Sauk Centre. The entry states that the headline's contents were not verified, and this article does not assert them.[^18] ## Notes [^1]: Wikipedia, *Sinclair Lewis* (rev. 1376725146, retrieved 2026-10-27) — birth on February 7, 1885, in Sauk Centre, Minnesota; death on January 10, 1951. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Lewis [^2]: Stearns County, *Sauk Centre* (county web page) — Sauk Centre as a city within Stearns County. https://www.stearnscountymn.gov/837/Sauk-Centre [^3]: Wikipedia, *Sinclair Lewis* (retrieved 2026-10-27) — 1930 Nobel Prize in Literature and the text of its citation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Lewis [^4]: Wikipedia, *Sinclair Lewis*, lead and "Works" (retrieved 2026-10-27) — the six popular novels and their years; Armed Services Editions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Lewis [^5]: Wikipedia, *Sinclair Lewis* (retrieved 2026-10-27) — the statement that Lewis was the first author from the United States and the Americas to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Lewis [^6]: City of Sauk Centre / Sauk Centre tourism authority, *History* (heritage page) — self-description; National Register properties; Sinclair Lewis Boyhood Home; the town's first-laureate claim, as recorded in at-issue entry AI-Stearns-092. https://www.visitsaukcentre.org/history [^7]: Nobel Foundation, *Sinclair Lewis — Nobel Lecture: The American Fear of Literature* (December 12, 1930) — the "rustic colony to world empire" passage; criticism of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and university literature departments. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1930/lewis/lecture/ [^8]: The Pulitzer Prizes, *Sinclair Lewis, Main Street, burglary and rejection notice* — the 1921 jury recommendation overridden by Columbia's trustees; Lewis's 1926 refusal for *Arrowsmith* and his stated reasons. https://www.pulitzer.org/article/sinclair-lewis-main-street-burglary-and-rejection-notice [^9]: Wikipedia, *Sinclair Lewis*, "Early life" (retrieved 2026-10-27) — parents, siblings, his mother's death in 1891, Oberlin, Yale, Helicon Home Colony. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Lewis [^10]: Wikipedia, *Sinclair Lewis*, "Career" (retrieved 2026-10-27) — move to New York in 1910; Socialist Party membership in 1911; first books in 1912 and 1914. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Lewis [^11]: Wikipedia, *Sinclair Lewis*, "Personal life" (retrieved 2026-10-27) — marriages, sons, divorce dates, death in Rome, burial, posthumous novel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Lewis [^12]: Merriam-Webster, *Babbittry* (dictionary entry) — definition, etymology, first known use in 1921. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/babbittry [^13]: Wikipedia, *Sinclair Lewis*, "Later years" (retrieved 2026-10-27) — the Dreiser dispute of 1930–1931 and Lewis's 1944 campaign for Dreiser; *It Can't Happen Here*; treatment at Austen Riggs in 1937; eleven post-Nobel novels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Lewis [^14]: University of Chicago Law School, *"It Can't Happen Here": The Lessons of History* — scholarly treatment of the novel. https://www.law.uchicago.edu/node/64406 [^15]: University of Chicago Law School, Chicago Unbound, book chapter 1523 — scholarly treatment of the novel. https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/book_chapters/1523/ [^16]: Wikipedia, *Sinclair Lewis*, "Legacy" (retrieved 2026-10-27) — decline in reputation and later revival; Amazon best-seller ranking after 2016; postage stamp; 1960 bust. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Lewis [^17]: Wikipedia, *Original Main Street Historic District* — National Register listing in 1994; ten blocks; about 90 contributing properties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_Main_Street_Historic_District [^18]: The White House, *Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos* (presidential action, March 2025) — the document to which the project anchors its Stearns at-issue entries. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/stopping-waste-fraud-and-abuse-by-eliminating-information-silos/