MAIN STREET

Main Street is a novel written by Sinclair Lewis, and published in 1920 by HARCOURT, BRACE, & HOWE. Satirizing small-town life, Main Street is perhaps Sinclair Lewis's most famous book and led in part to his eventual 1930 Nobel Prize for Literature. The story is set in the small town of Gopher Prairie, a fictionalized version of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, Lewis's hometown, during the 1910s. It relates the life and struggles of Carol Milford Kennicott, a self-made young woman with a strong personality, as she comes into conflict with the small-town mentality of the residents of Gopher Prairie. References are made to the start of World War I, the United States' entry into the war, and the years following its end, including the start of Prohibition in 1920. Highly acclaimed upon publication, Main Street was adapted into a play in 1921, and a movie in 1923, the first film by Warner Bros. studio. The novel remains a recognized American classic.