Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)

"Everything that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit" - Sinclair Lewis

A selective list of online literary criticism for the twentieth-century American novelist and story writer Sinclair Lewis, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars and articles published in peer-reviewed sources

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introduction & literary criticism

"Sinclair Lewis." A short introduction to Lewis and his writing. Also "The American Novel: 1890s-1920s Naturalism." An overview of naturalism in the American novel, and some of the novelists who can be considered naturalistic. Web site from PBS.

"Autobiography." From the Nobel Prize web page for Sinclair Lewis, the first American to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1930.

"Sinclair Lewis Collection." The manuscript holdings at the Port Washington (NY) Public Library and a brief biography of Lewis.

Allen, Brooke. "Sinclair Lewis: The bard of discontents." Says Allen, "Sinclair Lewis, like his literary idols Shaw, Wells, and Ibsen, was one of the world's great intellectual liberators. He looked at the institutions that tyrannically ruled American life-the Family, the Protestant Church, Business Interests, Good Fellowship-and made his readers understand that their ascendance was arbitrary and to a large degree baneful." Hudson Review Spring 2003 [first page of article only, blurred].

Fleming, Robert E. An introduction to Sinclair Lewis from the Literary Encyclopedia, 08 January 2001. Main Street (1920); Babbitt (1922); Arrowsmith (1925); Elmer Gantry (1927); Dodsworth (1929); It Can't Happen Here (1935); Kingsblood Royal (1947) [subscription service].

Hutchisson, James M. A review of Sinclair Lewis: New Essays in Criticism (Whitson Publishing 1997). Reviewed by William T. Hamilton for RMMLA 53, 2.

Smiley, Jane. "All-American Iconoclast." A brief article by novelist Jane Smiley on Lewis and the new Lewis biography by Richard Lingeman, in the NY Times 20 Jan. 2002.

Vidal, Gore. "The Romance of Sinclair Lewis." Novelist Gore Vidal on Sinclair Lewis. New York Review of Books 8 Oct. 1992

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