Arrowsmith

by Lewis, Sinclair; Parry, Sally E.; Doctorow, E.L.

• ISBN13: 9780451530868
• ISBN10: 0451530861
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-03-04
• Publisher: Signet Classics

Summary

1925. Illustrated with scenes from the Samuel Goldwyn Production, a United Artists Picture. Possibly the greatest satirist of his age, Lewis wrote novels that present a devastating picture of middle-class American life in the 1920s. Although he ridiculed the values, the lifestyles, and even the speech of his characters, there is often affection behind the irony. Sinclair's most praised novel and the one that won him the Pulitzer Prize (which he refused) Arrowsmith tells the tale of Martin Arrowsmith fulfills a lifelong dream of becoming a physician with a passion for research. Combating the forces of ignorance and greed, he relentlessly pursues scientific truth, even in the face of his own personal tragedy. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

Author Biography

Sinclair Lewis was born in 1885 in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, and graduated from Yale University in 1908. His college career was interrupted by various part-time occupations, including a period working at the Helicon Home Colony, Upton Sinclair’s socialist experiment in New Jersey. He worked for some years as a free lance editor and journalist, during which time he published several minor novels. But with the publication of Main Street (1920), which sold half a million copies, he achieved wide recognition. This was followed by the two novels considered by many to be his finest, Babbitt (1922) and Arrowsmith (1925), which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1926, but declined by Lewis. In 1930, following Elmer Gantry (1927) and Dodsworth (1929), Sinclair Lewis became the first American author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for distinction in world literature. This was the apogee of his literary career, and in the period from Ann Vickers (1933) to the posthumously published World So Wide (1951) Lewis wrote ten novels that reveal the progressive decline of his creative powers. From Main Street to Stockholm, a collection of his letters, was published in 1952, and The Man from Main Street, a collection of essays, in 1953. During his last years Sinclair Lewis wandered extensively in Europe, and after his death in Rome in 1951 his ashes were returned to his birthplace.