Reading Order
Main Street LewisSinclair Lewis's Small-Town Satire Reading Order
Sinclair Lewis's Main Street (1920) was the bestselling novel of its year and the book that made Lewis the most famous American novelist of the 1920s — Carol Kennicott, a college-educated woman who marries a small-town Minnesota doctor and finds Gopher Prairie's provincialism and conformity suffocating. Main Street preceded Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), Elmer Gantry (1927), and Dodsworth (1929) as the opening shot of Lewis's decade-long satire of American institutions. It sold over 300,000 copies in its first year and was rejected for the Pulitzer Prize because the jury felt it was too negative about American life; the controversy made Lewis the defining satirist of his era. The novel stands alone; Babbitt is the natural companion, tackling small-city conformity from the male booster's perspective.
Where to start
Main Street
Complete Main Street Lewis Book List
- 1Buy
Main Street
Sinclair Lewis·1920·The main novel — Carol Kennicott in Gopher Prairie, the satire of small-town conformity and provincial narrowness. - 2Buy
Babbitt
Sinclair Lewis·1922·The companion — George Babbitt in Zenith City, the male booster's perspective on the same conformist culture Carol Kennicott found suffocating. - 3Buy
Arrowsmith
Sinclair Lewis·1925·The Pulitzer winner Lewis declined — the idealistic doctor in a world of medical compromise, Lewis's most sympathetic portrait of a protagonist. - 4Buy
Winesburg, Ohio
Sherwood Anderson·1919·The small-town predecessor — the grotesques of Winesburg, Anderson's portrait of Midwestern provincial life that Lewis was reacting against and building on simultaneously. - 5Buy
My Ántonia
Willa Cather·1918·The prairie novel as elegy rather than satire — Jim Burden and Ántonia Shimerda in Nebraska, the counter-tradition to Main Street in the same Midwestern landscape.
Main Street Lewis — Frequently Asked Questions
Is Main Street or Babbitt the better Sinclair Lewis novel?
Babbitt is generally considered the more tightly constructed and more purely satirical novel. Main Street is broader and more sympathetic to its protagonist — Carol Kennicott is more self-aware than George Babbitt — making it a different experience rather than a lesser one.
Why did Main Street cause such controversy?
Because it directly attacked the complacency and self-satisfaction of small-town American life at a time when that life was widely celebrated as the American ideal. Lewis named names — the boosterism, the gossip, the cultural poverty — and readers recognized themselves and their towns.
Should I read Main Street before Babbitt?
Chronologically Main Street came first, but either works as an entry point. Main Street is longer and broader; Babbitt is tighter and more focused. Many readers find Babbitt the better starting place.
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