Main Street (Barnes & Noble Classics Ser - Sinclair Lewis [239]
Hutchisson, James M. The Rise of Sinclair Lewis, 1920-1930. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996.
Hutchisson, James M., ed. Sinclair Lewis : New Essays in Criticism. Troy, NY: Whitson, 1997.
Schorer, Mark, ed. Sinclair Lewis: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1962.
Letters
Koblas, John J., and Dave Page, eds. Selected Letters of Sinclair Lewis. Madison, WI: Main Street Press, 1985.
Lewis, Sinclair. From Main Street to Stockholm: Letters of Sinclair Lewis, 1919-1930. Edited and with an introduction by Harrison Smith. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1952.
Other Books of Interest
De Kruif, Paul. The Sweeping Wind, A Memoir. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1962.
Kazin, Alfred. On Native Grounds. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1942.
Kurth, Peter. American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson. Boston: Little, Brown, 1990.
Lewis, Grace Hegger. With Love from Gracie: Sinclair Lewis: 1912-1915. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1955.
Mencken, H. L. My Life as Author and Editor. Edited and with an introduction by Jonathan Yardley. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.
Nobel Foundation Website
Lewis’s autobiographical sketch for the Nobel Committee can be read on the Nobel Foundation’s website, on the page accessed with this address: http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/1930/lewis-autobio.html
Lewis’s speech accepting the 1930 Nobel Prize for Literature can be read on the Nobel Foundation’s website, on the page accessed with this address: http://www nobel.se/literature/laureates/1930/lewis-lecture.html
a
Corruption of Ojibwa, the name of a Native American tribe that lived in the regions around Lake Superior.
b
Eugene Brieux (1858-1932), French playwright who wrote on current social problems.
c
Free-thinking American lawyer and orator (1833-1899), nicknamed “the Great Agnostic.”
d
The Boston was a one-step waltz popular in the early 1900s.
e
The Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions recruited students as Protestant missionaries in Asia during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
f
Decorated with a pattern burned on with hot instruments.
g
The Elsie Dinsmore books, a series of children’s novels (begun in 1867) by Martha Farquharson Finley.
h
“Bath mat” spelled backward.
i
Girls (Latin).
j
Friedrich Max Müller (1823-1900), well-known German-born British philologist and Orientalist.
k
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), influential abolitionist and popular American poet, known as “the Quaker Poet.”
l
Greek poet (c.600 B.C.) of Lesbos who wrote about love, often of other women.
m
Queen of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra during the third century A.D., who sought to extend her kingdom into the Roman Empire.
n
Soviet national anthem dating from the Russian Revolution of 1917 until 1944.
o
Idealistic French novelist and socialist sympathizer (1866-1944).
p
Political doctrine that advocated control of industry by labor unions; the syndicalist Confédération Générale du Travail (General Confederation of Labor), founded in 1895, represented French labor organizations.
q
Les Imagistes were avant-garde poets of the early 1900s led in America by Ezra Pound; other Americans were H. D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961) and Amy Lowell (1874-1925).
r
Mystical religious system that grafted Eastern onto Western thought; the Theosophical Society was founded in 1875.
s
Actually German; here “Dutch” is a corruption of the word deutsch, meaning German.
t
Town in Lewis’s 1919 novel Free Air.
u
Large, expensive automobiles.
v
Slapstick film starring the popular comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle (1887-1933).
w
Clothing made of strong cotton material.
x
Linen.
y
Carol is paraphrasing the 1854 poem “Charge of the Light Brigade,” by English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
z
Trimmed with tassels or other ornaments.
aa
System devised in Gary, Indiana, for maximizing the use of school buildings.
ab
Phoebe Anne Oakley Moses (1860-1926), sharpshooter and star of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.
ac
Daring hunter, originally from the Bible; see Genesis 10:8-10.