Sinclair Lewis in the context of "H. L. Mencken"

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⭐ Core Definition: Sinclair Lewis

Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first author from the United States (and the first from the Americas) to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." Lewis wrote six popular novels: Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), Elmer Gantry (1927), Dodsworth (1929), and It Can't Happen Here (1935).

Several of his notable works were critical of American capitalism and materialism during the interwar period. Lewis is respected for his strong characterizations of modern working women. H. L. Mencken wrote of him, "[If] there was ever a novelist among us with an authentic call to the trade ... it is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds."

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Sinclair Lewis in the context of 1936 Nobel Prize in Literature

The 1936 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the American playwright Eugene O'Neill (1888–1953) "for the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy". He is the second American to become a literature laureate after Sinclair Lewis in 1930 and the only American playwright awarded the prize.

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Sinclair Lewis in the context of Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh), and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and made France her home for the remainder of her life. She hosted a Paris salon, where the leading figures of modernism in literature and art, such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson and Henri Matisse, would meet.

In 1933, Stein published a quasi-memoir of her Paris years, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, written in the voice of Alice B. Toklas, her life partner. The book became a literary bestseller and vaulted Stein from the relative obscurity of the cult-literature scene into the limelight of mainstream attention. Two quotes from her works have become widely known: "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose", and "there is no there there", with the latter often taken to be a reference to her childhood home of Oakland.

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Sinclair Lewis in the context of Fun and Fancy Free

Fun and Fancy Free, formerly known as Fun & Fancy Free, is a 1947 American animated musical fantasy anthology film produced by Walt Disney and Ben Sharpsteen and released on September 27, 1947, by RKO Radio Pictures. The film is a compilation of two stories: Bongo, narrated by Dinah Shore and loosely based on the short story "Little Bear Bongo" by Sinclair Lewis; and Mickey and the Beanstalk, narrated by Edgar Bergen and based on the "Jack and the Beanstalk" fairy tale. Though the film is primarily animated, it also uses live-action segments starring Bergen to join its two stories.

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Sinclair Lewis in the context of E. O. Excell

Edwin Othello Excell (December 13, 1851 – June 10, 1921), commonly known as E. O. Excell, was a prominent American publisher, composer, song leader, and singer of music for church, Sunday school, and evangelistic meetings during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some of the significant collaborators in his vocal and publishing work included Sam P. Jones, William E. Biederwolf, Gipsy Smith, Charles Reign Scoville, J. Wilbur Chapman, W. E. M. Hackleman, Charles H. Gabriel and D. B. Towner.

His 1909 stanza selection and arrangement of "Amazing Grace" became the most widely used and familiar setting of that hymn by the second half of the twentieth century. The influence of his sacred music on American popular culture through revival meetings, religious conventions, circuit chautauquas, and church hymnals was substantial enough by the 1920s to garner a satirical reference by Sinclair Lewis in the novel Elmer Gantry.

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Sinclair Lewis in the context of 1930 Nobel Prize in Literature

The 1930 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to American novelist Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humour, new types of characters." He is the first American Nobel laureate in literature.

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