The novel that Sinclair Lewis wrote after Main Street was Babbitt. Published in 1922, it is about a middle-aged salesman and his uncomfortable search for meaning in an increasingly impersonal world. A Bantam Books edition, published in 1998, is currently available, with an introduction by John Wickersham.

In chapter 14 of Main Street, Lewis says, "Her preparations for stalking out of the Doll's House were not yet visible." The reference is to Henrik Ibsen's 1879 play, A Doll's House, about a strong-willed wife who defies social custom when she finds that she can no longer be kept by a husband who loves her but does not respect her intelligence. Dover Press published a thrift edition of this play in 1992.

French writer Gustav Flaubert's Emma Bovary is often referred to as clearly being a model for Carol Kennicott—they both are women who find...