Introduction

Sinclair Lewis's Main Street (1920) was the first best-selling American novel of the century, selling almost 300,000 copies in its first year of publication and nearly 100,000 in the second year. When it was published, a reviewer in the Nation wrote, "Main Street would add to the power and distinction of the contemporary literature of any country." The novel brought Lewis fame and glory, making up for his past literary disappointments and establishing him as a serious force among his vaunted literary generation.

Main Street follows the life of idealistic Carol Milford from the time she is a student at Blodgett College in 1906, focusing on the period from 1912 to 1920 and her life in the fictional Gopher Prairie, Minnesota. The novel depicts the town as smug, conformist, and intolerant of the free-thinking, and it challenges established ideas about life in small-town...