In 1903 Lewis entered Yale, where he wrote essays, romantic fiction, and Tennysonian poetry for campus publications; some of these pieces are collected in The Man from Main Street (1953). After delaying his graduation by some wanderings in England and Panama, Lewis graduated in 1908, having already sold his first short story, "Matsu-No-Kata: A Romance of Old Japan," to Pacific Monthly in 1905. It appeared in the December issue and was collected in Selected Short Stories (1935).
He continued his literary apprenticeship by selling a few short stories and holding various journalism and publishing jobs in Iowa, New York, California, and Washington, D.C. In 1912 Lewis published his first novel, Hike and the Aeroplane, a pseudonymous boy's book. Two years later (on 15 April 1914) he married Grace Livingstone Hegger, whom he had met in New York City; they had a son, Wells, in 1917. Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man, published in 1914, establishes a familiar pattern in Lewis's novels and stories: an idealistic protagonist becomes dissatisfied, rebels, then adjusts to his discontent.
In general Lewis's publication of short stories declined as his novels sold. From 1909 to 1915 he published three novels and fourteen stories; from 1916 to 1919, three more novels and forty-four stories.
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