Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$750.00 + shipping
Description: First edition, second issue. [8], 451 pp. 1 vols. 8vo. INSCRIBED. Inscribed on the front free endpaper: "To Anthony Bower who really worked on Main Street while the author merely played. Sinclair Lewis Jan. 10, 1921." Pastore 7 Original blue cloth stamped orange with head and foot of spine rubbed away, spine faded and reattached
Seller: James Cummins Bookseller, ABAA, New York, NY, U.S.A.
Price: US$1500.00 + shipping
Description: The story of Carol Kennicott. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920. First edition, second state (with type batter on pp. 54 and 387). Inscribed by Sinclair Lewis on front free endpaper. Octavo (7 3/8 x 5 inches; 187 x 127 mm). [2, blank], [8], 451, [3, blank] pp. Inscription reads: "To Mr. + Mrs/ Will Owen Jones/ Christmas, 1920/William Allen White/ asks me to send you/this book in Christmas/ greeting- + he let/me tag along after hin!/ Sinclair Lewis/ Washington/ Dec. 1920" The inscription is probably to William Owen Jones managing editor of the Nebraska State Journal and author of the book By Land and Sea, a publication on foreign travel. Original dark blue cloth stamped in orange on front cover and spine. Spine lightly sunned and the edges of the spine and boards with a small amount of wear. Small booksellers stamp on front pastedown. Overall a very good copy. "Lewis attained fame with the publication of Main Street (1920). The book's protagonist, Carol Kennicott, a quixotic young woman determined to adopt a small prairie town and bring culture to it, moves to Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, a town not unlike Sauk Centre, and is dismayed by the small-minded people who live there. Main Street is an exposé of midwestern small-town life, depicting the prejudices of America's villagers and expressing the quintessential statement of the "revolt against the village" introduced by nineteenth-century novelists such as E. W. Howe and Joseph Kirkland. Lewis's satirical wit and his skill at creating memorable characters, however, set him apart from his literary predecessors. The novel was not only a bestseller, but a cultural phenomenon, inspiring a host of similar books, jokes about small towns, a popular song ("Main Street: A Fox Trot Song"), and fan mail from a variety of readers ranging from housewives who recognized themselves in the book's protagonist to fellow authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sherwood Anderson. The novel was controversial, however, some reviewers seeing it as unfair to the small town and even unfair to the American character. In part because of its controversial nature, the novel was passed over for the Pulitzer Prize, for which it was a major contender in 1921." (American Dictionary of National Biography). Lewis was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930. Pastore pp. 89-101. HBS 67992. $1,500.
Seller: Heritage Book Shop, ABAA, Beverly Hills, CA, U.S.A.
LEWIS, SINCLAIR. Main Street. Harcourt Brace & Howe, New York, 1920.
Price: US$1682.01 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Octavo. Blue cloth with small orange panels. Lacking dust jacket. This copy inscribed by the author "To Florence + Dick Boeckel, who endured me while I wrote it-Sinclair Lewis" Florence Boeckel was a prominent suffragist and press chairman of the National Women's Party. Also a noted pacifist, activist supporter of the League of Nations and the National Council for the Prevention of War, all things Lewis believed in. Lewis wrote the introduction to her famous pacifist manifesto, Between War and Peace: A Handbook for Peace Workers (1928). Lewis and Boeckel lived and worked in New York in the teens and he probably bounced passages of Main Street off them while it was still in manuscript. Well loved copy with overall wear, especially to the extremities. Interior clean.Nice association copy.
Seller: Karol Krysik Books ABAC/ILAB, IOBA, PBFA, Toronto, ON, Canada
Lewis, Sinclair. Main Street.. Harcourt, Brace and Howe, New York, 1920.
Price: US$2500.00 + shipping
Description: First edition, first printing of Lewis' classic work. Octavo, bound in full morocco by the Harcourt Bindery with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, gilt ruling to the front and rear panel, gilt inner dentelles stamp-signed by the Harcourt Bindery, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on a page bound in, "To Martha Bucher with the greetings of Chester's friend Sinclair Lewis K.C. May 4, 1926." In fine condition. An exceptional presentation. Carol Milford is a young, liberated woman from Saint Paul, Minnesota, who marries a small-town doctor named Will Kennicott. Persuaded to move to Gopher Prairie, her husbandâs home-town, Carol is horrified to find herself living in an ugly, back-water community. A satiric depiction of Carolâs attempt to raise the inhabitants of Gopher Prairie to her own smug level, Main Street is one of Sinclair Lewisâs most significant works.
Seller: Raptis Rare Books, Palm Beach, FL, U.S.A.