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Main Street
by Lewis, Sinclair
- Used
- very good
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Very Good/No Jacket
- Seller
-
Rockville, Maryland, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York, New York, U.S.A.: Harcourt Brace and Howe, 1920. First Edition 1st Printing. Hardcover. Very Good/No Jacket. 1920 Harcourt, Brace & Howe TRUE FIRST edition meeting true first requirements. There is NO broken type on either page 387 and the word "may" is intact and on page 54, the # 54 is also clean and unbroken. Extremely rare and in Very Good condition. There is no raised type or stamping but it has dark blue covers and minor wear at the spine ends and corners. The interior has just a tiny bit of foxing on the ffep but otherwise is a clean tight edition. A very solid copy of this American Classic!
Synopsis
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis is a satirical novel concerning small town America. The story follows Carol Milford, a liberal and free-spirited woman, as she marries Dr. William Kennicott and settles in his hometown of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota. Upon arrival, Carol is shocked by the conservatism and general backwardness of Gopher Prairie—which is loosely based on Lewis’ hometown of Sauk Centre, Minnesota. The residents of Gopher Prairie seem more interested in gossip than larger cultural or social issues, which frustrates Carol. In various attempts to reform the town, she implements one improvement project after another, all of them ending in failure. In the end, Carol realizes that her frustrations with the individuals of the town should really have been directed towards its institutions and that although she was been beaten, she has kept the faith. Lewis initially seems to be attacking his small town roots in the novel, but his satire is double-edged; Main Street is not only a critique of simple townspeople, but also of the superficial intellectuals who look down on them. Main Street was not expected to be a commercial success. Lewis anticipated selling 10,000 copies; Harcourt, Brace and Howe anticipated 20,000. In the first six months of 1921, Main Street sold over 180,000 copies. Main Street is ranked 68th on Modern Library’s “100 Best” English-language novels of the 20th century. The novel was initially awarded the Pulitzer Prize for literature that year, but the Board of Trustees overturned the decision and gave the prize to Edith Wharton for The Age of Innocence instead. (In 1925, Lewis rejected the Pulitzer Prize for Arrowsmith because he felt that he had deserved the prize for Main Street.)
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Details
- Bookseller
- Bren-Books.com
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 4062
- Title
- Main Street
- Author
- Lewis, Sinclair
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Jacket Condition
- No Jacket
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First Edition 1st Printing
- Publisher
- Harcourt Brace and Howe
- Place of Publication
- New York, New York, U.S.A.
- Date Published
- 1920
- Keywords
- BOOK INTO FILM
- Bookseller catalogs
- Book Into Film; fiction-literature;
Terms of Sale
Bren-Books.com
All books guaranteed! Full refunds given when notified within 14 business days.
About the Seller
Bren-Books.com
Biblio member since 2005
Rockville, Maryland
About Bren-Books.com
Bren-Books.Com specializes in first edition books specializing in Classic fiction, books made into films and mysteries. We also carry many SIGNED books both in fiction & non-fiction.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- FFEP
- A common abbreviation for Front Free End Paper. Generally, it is the first page of a book and is part of a single sheet that...
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
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