Books with title MAIN STREET

This classic by Sinclair Lewis shattered the sentimental American myth of happy small-town life with its satire. Main Street attacks the conformity and dullness of early-twentieth-century midwestern village life in the story of Carol Milford, the city girl who marries the town doctor. Her efforts to bring culture to the prairie village are met by a wall of gossip, greed, and petty, small-minded bigotry. The first popular bestseller to attack conventional ideas about marriage, gender roles, and small town life, Main Street established Lewis as a major American novelist.

"The greatest photographer in fiction that we have produced.; there is no sharper eye than his in literature." - The New York Times Book Review On October 23, 1920, Harcourt, Brace & Howe published Main Street by Sinclair Lewis and no one ever looked at small-town America in quite the same way again. The book became an immediate sensation. Biographer Mark Schorer called its publication “the most sensational event in twentieth-century American publishing history.” As of 1922 an estimated two million Americans had read the book. Ludwig Lewisohn conjectured that “Perhaps no novel since Uncle Tom’s Cabin struck so deep over so wide a surface of the national life.” But most of all, Main Street struck a nerve with women readers, through his vivid descriptions, his varied characters, their common fear of gossip, and, most of all, his appealing approach to sex.

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.