(February 7th, 1885 — January 10th, 1951)

Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist and playwright. In 1930, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

As a child, Lewis had difficultly keeping friends. He was considered unattractive, and had “country” manners that did not suit his schoolmates as a child or later at Yale. He’d already begun writing long before he entered university and made a career of it upon graduating.

His literary career began writing genre short stories for various newspapers and magazines and selling plots to Jack London. His first published novel was a potboiler written under a pseudonym. He wrote several more serious novels before he struck mainstream success. His novel Main Street sold nearly two million copies in two years.

Lewis was married twice. Both marriages ended in divorce. He had a temporary friendship with Theodore Dreiser that ended in a very bitter feud.

Later in Lewis’ life, he was hospitalized for alcoholism, which the doctor’s discovered was a long-term and very serious addiction. Lewis did not care to treat his addiction. He lived another fourteen years before dying of complications related to his alcoholism.