Sinclair Lewis was an American writer and playwright, best known for his novels Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), Elmer Gantry (1927), Dodsworth (1929), and It Can't Happen Here (1935). In 1930, he became the first American writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.A writer from an early age, Lewis dabbled in short stories and pulp fiction, even selling plots he had developed to other writers (most notably Jack London) before beginning his own career as a novelist.Lewis' first few books were met with modest critical and commercial success but, in 1920, he released Main Street which became a publishing sensation. The projected sales of the book were optimistically estimated to be 25,000 copies but. within six months it had already sold 180,000 copies. Within the first few years, sales were estimated to be over two million and the royalties made Lewis a rich man.Riding the success of Main Street, Lewis spent the 1920's turning out one successful book after another. Babbitt (1922) was a satire of American commercialism and Arrowsmith (1925) told the tale of an idealistic physician. The latter won the Pulitzer Prize, which Lewis declined, bitter that Main Street had not been given the award.He followed these up with Elmer Gantry (1927), about a corrupt Evangelical minister and Dodsworth (1929), a satire of the immensely wealthy and the pointless lives they lead.From the 1930's onward, Lewis continued to write (penning eleven more novels) but the only work of note was 1935's It Can't Happen Here, which was a cautionary tale of what happens when a fascist is elected President of the United States. This book saw a huge surge in popularity after the 2016 election, with many readers finding corollaries between Lewis' story and the rise of Donald Trump.Sinclair Lewis suffered from a severe drinking problem his entire life and, despite many attempts to cure himself of this disease, he ultimately died of advanced alcoholism in June of 1951.