Main Street (novel)
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The novel Main Street by Sinclair Lewis was published in 1920. The novel is set in Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, a fictionalized version of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, Lewis’s hometown. This portrait of the town was not particularly sympathetic, and the book was banned in neighboring Alexandria, Minnesota. The protagonist is Carol Kennicott, a doctor's wife, who is seeking to fit in to a very closed society. The novel is important for a number of reasons. Among them is the portrayal of a strong female protagonist (who during the novel leaves the town for a period to work in Washington), and what one might now call feminist themes, by a male writer. Lewis later won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Main Street was initially awarded the 1920 Pulitzer Prize for literature, but was rejected by the Board of Trustees, who overturned the jury's decision. The prize went, instead, to Edith Wharton for The Age of Innocence.
Though it was not expected to be extremely popular, in the first six months of 1921, it sold 180,000 copies.
See also
- Main street - the street in small town in America.