Sinclair Lewis

Main Street and Babbitt

This volume presents two novels by Sinclair Lewis: Main Street and Babbitt. The texts of both are taken from reprintings of the first editions that incorporate corrections made or authorized by Lewis within months of the first printings. In both cases, the corrected reprintings provide more accurate texts than do the first printings.

Lewis began to work intensively on Main Street, a novel he had had in mind for several years, in November 1919, and he finished the first draft by February 27, 1920. He continued to work on revisions through the spring and early summer and delivered the completed typescript to Alfred Harcourt of Harcourt, Brace and Howe on July 17. (The publishing firm had been in existence just about one year. Lewis had encouraged Harcourt, who had been in the trade department at Holt, to begin his own firm, and had bought $2,000 worth of stock to help get it started in July 1919.) Together they went over the text, and Lewis made some further revisions, completing the novel on July 27, 1920.

Main Street was published on October 23, 1920, by Harcourt, Brace and Howe. The first printing of 10,000 copies quickly sold out, and because of the difficulty of obtaining the proper paper in sufficient quantities, it was followed by numerous small printings. More than 25,000 copies were sold through November 1920, and over 180,000 copies by June 1921. Soon after the novel appeared, Harcourt, Brace and Howe received a letter from Louis N. Feipel of Brooklyn, New York, pointing out errors in the published text. Though Lewis did not agree with all the corrections suggested by Feipel, he did approve of some. Three corrections were made in the plates at least as early as January 1921 for the eleventh printing: "Society" was changed to "Association" at 177.30, the words "said Vida." were added at 291.31, and "Christian Endeavor" was changed to "Epworth League" at 461.6. No further authorized revisions are known to have been made, and so the eleventh printing of Main Street provides the text printed in this volume.

The idea for what became Babbitt apparently first occurred to Lewis in the fall of 1920. He made notes and collected material during a lecture tour in the Midwest from February through April 1921. In May 1921, Lewis sailed with his family to England, where he began writing Babbitt in July, and he continued work on it in Paris, Pallanza, and Rome, sending a portion of a draft to Harcourt from Rome in December 1921. He continued working on the novel after returning to London in January 1922, and when he arrived in New York in May 1922, he delivered the finished typescript to Harcourt. Lewis read proofs of the book in June while staying at the Forest Hills Inn on Long Island, and by July 22 the first bound copies of the book were available. Babbitt was published by Harcourt, Brace and Company (Howe had left the firm in January 1921) on September 14, 1922.

The first printing of Babbitt consisted of 80,500 copies and is known to exist with two states of page 49, the later of which incorporates two corrections: "Lyte" for "Purdy" (531.32 in this volume) and "any" for "my" (531.33). Three more corrections were made for the second printing of October 1922: "plain geometry" was changed to "plane geometry" at 555.7, "I means" was changed to "I mean" at 563.9, and " 'Three Black Pennies' " was changed to " 'Three Black Pennys' at 730.6. The third printing (also in October 1922) incorporated one further correction: "against the Open Shop" was changed to "for the Open Shop" at 835.30. In November, Louis Feipel sent Harcourt, Brace and Company a list of over seventy corrections and queries, eleven of which were incorporated into the fourth printing. "Brotherly" was changed to "Benevolent" at 496.24 and 636.34, "tread" to "trod" at 501.21, "cain" to "Cain" at 527.29 and 798.9, "Redmen" to "Red Men" at 656.32, "tawney" to "tawny" at 663.36, "Oddfellows" to "Odd Fellows" at 669.14, "principals" to "principles" at 698.3, "Offut" to "Offutt" at 702.33, and "with" to "from" at 840.34. One additional correction was made for the fourth printing: "benny" (overcoat) was changed to "kelly" (hat) at 595.32, correcting an error in slang pointed out in Keith Preston's column "Hit or Miss" in the Chicago Daily News of November 4, 1922. This fourth printing of Babbitt represents the most authoritative version of the work and provides the text printed in this volume.

Because of the anticipated demand for Babbitt, a duplicate set of plates was made in July 1922 and the two corrections from the first printing were incorporated into it. Corrections in the second, third, and fourth printings, however, were made only to the original set of plates, which was used for reprintings through 1941 and then melted down. The duplicate plates, which did not contain the corrections made in the later printings, were used for printings after 1941, and became the source of all later editions of Babbitt (for more details, see Matthew J. Bruccoli, "Textual Variants in Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt," Studies in Bibliography XI [1958]). This volume brings back into print for the first time since 1941 the corrected text of Babbitt.

This volume presents the texts of the corrected reprintings of the original editions chosen for inclusion; it does not attempt to reproduce features of the typographic design, such as the display capitalization of chapter openings. The texts are reproduced without change, except for the correction of typographical errors. Spelling, punctuation, and capitalization often are expressive features, and they are not altered, even when inconsistent or irregular.

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